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THE LIFE OF THADDEUS STEVENS 




FROM THE COLLECTION OF ROBERT COSTER 

Thaddeus Stevens at 72 



THE LIFE OF THADDEUS STEVENS 
A S+u.dj in American Po/i-Kca./ 
-HiS-ho f\/ t £s p<zci a lly in +■ h<- 

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find ~Re<L.ohst-r uuci-h i o n 



By 
James Albert Woodburn 



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i a n a po / 1 s 

Bobbs-I'errill Company 

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PREFACE 

The period of the Civil War and the Reconstruction 
of the Union has been the subject of more historical 
inquiry and production within recent years than has 
any other in American history. The books, essays, 
magazine articles, monographs and reminiscences that 
have been devoted to this period indicate the prevalent 
interest which the epoch holds for many men of many 
minds. As the period recedes in time and other events 
of moment come and go, there may be a recession in 
this interest, but it is not likely permanently to decline. 
As the history of modern Europe still centers about the 
French Revolution, so will the tremendous upheaval of 
the Civil War continue to occupy the center of the 
stage in the history of the nineteenth century in Amer- 
ica. That struggle has been called from the bench of 
the Supreme Court of the United States "the greatest 
civil war known in the history of the human race." it 
is but natural, indeed inevitable, that generations of 
Americans should be interested in a struggle that has 
so vitally affected the history and destiny of their 
nation. 

Thaddeus Stevens was the dominant figure in the 
American Congress during this notable period. It- 
may reasonably be claimed that no more masterful 
leader ever directed the politics and legislation of the 
House of Representatives. The House under Stevens 
was not ruled by a system that created a one-man of- 
ficial power. A man then led the House according to 
bis strength and the strength of his cause. Stevens 

as given no set of rules that arbitrarily suppressed 



PREFACE 

opposition. The House following was free to act; it 
was free to accord or to withhold support, and Stevens, 
while the recognized leader, often found himself de- 
feated and frustrated in the ends that he wished to ac- 
complish. But there is no doubt of the preeminence 
of Stevens' personality in the House in the War dec- 
ade, and it may be said that for a part of this decade 
he led both the House and the nation by the sheer force 
and energy of his mind and will. He was the strong 
man in the arena, and it seems fitting that these con- 
secutive studies in Civil War and Reconstruction 
should be gathered around the life and career of this 
Congressional leader. 

During the War, under the leadership of Lincoln, 
the presidency was the dominant department of the 
government. In Reconstruction the presidency was 
subordinate, if not impotent, and the Congressional 
arm of the government was all-powerful. In that pe- 
riod the leadership of Stevens, especially of his party 
majority in the House, was unquestioned. His career 
there and his speeches throughout the bitter period of 
war and the more bitter strife that followed the war 
offer a subject for study that no historian can neglect. 
It can hardly be claimed that this biography makes a 
full or adequate presentation of any part of Stevens' 
career; nor, in view of the great amount of matter that 
has been published on this era, that it throws a great 
deal of new light upon the period in which he figured 
so largely. But it may be claimed, however, that it 
does enable Stevens to speak more fully for himself 
than he has been allowed to do by others who have 
treated in a more limited way his principles and poli- 
cies. The biography also brings into greater promi- 
nence, and presents, as I have ventured to believe, a 
more equitable review of Stevens' opinions and agenc> 



PREFACE 

in the important financial controversies of his times in 
which he took such a vigorous part. 

Stevens' views on money and finance have usually 
been referred to as errors and vagaries by orthodox 
writers on finance as well as by most of the historians 
of the time. But these views may hardly be said to 
have been fully and impartially presented by many of 
those who have been most severe in their criticisms. It 
is due to Stevens that in any treatise on his life and 
times, the "other side" of the financial issue for which 
he so stoutly and constantly stood should be more ade- 
quately presented. Wherein this biography appears to 
condone his "errors" or show too much sympathy for 
his "heterodoxy" it will, of course, be subject to the 
same condemnation and rebuke with which Stevens' 
financial utterances were always visited in his day. But 
it is believed that his cause is better understood than it 
was in his generation and that if it is not approved by 
academic economists it will at any rate find more sup- 
port, sympathy and appreciation than in former days 
among thoughtful and intelligent students of finance. 

I am indebted to Honorable Samuel W. McCall's ex- 
cellent brief Life of Stevens; to Mr. W. U. Hensel, 
of Lancaster, Pennsylvania, for his study of Stevens 
as a Lawyer, and to Mr. Hensel and other citizens in 
Lancaster for help in other ways; to my colleague, 
Professor William A. Rawles, for helpful suggestions 
in certain parts of the volume ; to Mr. Herbert Putnam, 
Librarian or Congress, for liberal privileges in the use 
of the Stevens letters and manuscripts in the Mac- 
Pherson papers that are yet unpublished. The scope 
of the volume has permitted the use of these papers to 
but a limited extent. It is to be hoped that some stu- 
dent of the period will soon edit and bring to the light 
these letters and papers which the late Edward Mac- 



PREFACE 

Pherson had intended before his death to make the 
basis of a full and adequate presentation of the life, 
letters and speeches of Thaddeus Stevens. This biog- 
raphy is offered not as such a work, but rather as 
merely a further contribution to the study of an impor- 
tant period and character in our history. 



James A. Woodburn. 



Indiana University, Bloomington. 
January 8, 1913. 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PAGE 

I Early Days 1 

II The Early Anti-Mason 13 

III The Buckshot War 28 

IV Defender of Free Schools 41 

V The Early Fsee-Soiler 55 

VI In Congress Before the War; Anti-Slavery 

Philippics 73 

' VII On the Eve of War 125 

''VIII Disunion, Secession, and No Compromise . . . 152 

IX Slavery and the War 168 

X The Constitution and the War 207 

XI Ways and Means in the War ; the Greenback . 239 

XII Reconstruction During the War 293 

XIII Johnson and Reconstruction 324 

XIV The Breach with Johnson 339 

XV The First Congressional Plan 369 

XVI The Appeal to the People 406 

XVII Military Reconstruction 431 

XVIII Military Reconstruction (Continued) . . . 458 

XIX Impeachment 491 

XX Confiscation 521 

XXI The Greenbacker ; Funding, Debt Payment and 

Contraction 536 

XXII The Greenbacker; Funding, Debt Payment and 

Contraction (Continued) 561 

XXIII Closing Days and Characteristics .... 584 



THE LIFE OF THADDEUS STEVENS 



THE LIFE OF 
THADDEUS STEVENS 



CHAPTER I 

EARLY DAYS 

THADDEUS STEVENS was born in Danville, 
Vermont, April 4, 1792, the year following the 
admission of Vermont to the Union. His parents had 
come from Massachusetts a few years before, in a 
family migration with the Harrises, Morrills and 
others. The mother of Stevens was a Morrill, who, 
judging from all accounts that have come down, was a 
woman of the finest and highest type. The father was 
not thrifty nor enterprising and did not succeed in pro- 
viding very well for his famify. He was a shoemaker ; 
and the son, Thaddeus, learned enough of the father's 
trade to enable him to make shoes for the family. 
Through all his long life Thaddeus Stevens was sel- 
dom heard to refer to his father, and perhaps he knew 
little about him. He spoke of his father's great repu- 
tation as an athlete, and Thaddeus remembered that his 
father had been known as the champion wrestler in all 
the country round. The later years of the elder 
Stevens' life appear to be wrapped in mystery. Some 
say that he left his family soon after settling in Ver- 
mont, and was never heard of again. Another tradi- 

I 



2 THE LIFE OF THADDEUS STEVENS 

tion is to the effect that he was killed in the War of 
1812; while still others assert that he died at home 
when his children were very young. 1 Certain it is that 
the mother, with four little children, all boys, was left 
in dire poverty. Thaddeus, the youngest, and the 
mother's favorite, came up through adversity and the 
trials of penury. He never ceased to recall with af- 
fection and gratitude his mother's love and sacrifices 
for him in these trying years. 

Stevens grew up in a democratic society. The 
Revolutionary War was a recent event at the time of 
his birth, but ten short years having elapsed since its 
close. Its heroes and its issues were fresh in mind and 
that great struggle was generally thought of as a con- 
flict for human equality and the rights of man. The 
early settlers in Vermont who had borne their fair 
share in the Revolutionary struggle, were an honest, 
rugged, independent God-fearing people. The great 
mass of them were engaged in making a plain living 
by industrious toil, and an aristocracy of wealth 
and rank was practically unknown. Men were not 
measured by the property they had, but were recognized 
for what they were, for what they could do, for what 
service they were able and willing to render to the com- 
munity. Men and women alike were hardy toilers, and 
there was a neighborliness among them that led them 

1 Stories are told to the effect that the paternity of Thaddeus 
Stevens is wrapped in mystery, and a former resident of Lancaster 
asserted that circumstantial and documentary evidence once ex- 
isted to show that he was the illegitimate son of Count Talley- 
rand, who, in the year of Stevens' birth, was a visitor in 
America. This may be only irresponsible gossip about the family 
of Stevens, but it will serve to show the kind of stories that 
have gathered in undue volume around Stevens' name. 



EARLY DAYS 3 

to share one another's burdens and to respect one an- 
other's virtues. There were no rich to be oppressors ; 
luxury was unknown and the poor were not despised. 
In such a social surrounding Stevens grew up, all his 
early impressions being calculated to implant in his 
mind hatred of privilege and of all inequalities that 
may be promoted by artificial restraints and favors of 
government. 

Stevens, besides being lame from birth, was a sickly 
youth. He seemed too frail and tender to earn his 
living by manual toil. This fact may have been, in 
part, the reason why his mother determined to send 
him to college ; but it must also have been true that she 
detected within him a talent and disposition that edu- 
cation and a college training were likely to develop. 
The mother must have perceived the great intellectual 
possibilities of the son, and she wished, above all, to 
provide for him opportunity for growth and a career. 
She must have been led many times to ponder in her 
heart the sayings and inquiries of a bright boy. 
Stevens was sensitive to her suffering, to her spirit of 
sacrifice and self-denial. One of the lasting memories 
and impressions of his childhood was of his mother's 
service during a plague of the spotted fever in Dan- 
ville and the surrounding country. At a time when 
so many were stricken that medical attendance and 
nursing could not be secured, Mrs. Stevens was un- 
tiring in her devotion and attention to her stricken 
neighbors, to those in worse circumstances than herself. 
She ministered to their wants, going from house to 
house and relieving their suffering in every possible 
way. Young Thaddeus was frequently taken with his 



4 THE LIFE OF THADDEUS STEVENS 

mother upon these errands of mercy, and the impres- 
sions that he received from the suffering that he wit- 
nessed, combined with his own experience in lameness 
and illness, led him to a keen and lifelong sympathy 
with suffering which was one of the notable traits of 
his character. 1 

In later years Stevens gave frequent tributes to his 
mother's virtues. In one of these expressions, recall- 
ing her early hardships and poverty, he said : 

" I really think the greatest pleasure of my life resulted 
from my ability to give my mother a farm of two hundred 
and fifty acres and a dairy of fourteen cows, and an occa- 
sional bright gold piece which she loved to deposit in the 
contributors' box of the Baptist church, which she at- 
tended. This always gave her much pleasure and me much 
satisfaction. My mother was a very extraordinary woman. 
I have met very few women like her. She worked day 
and night to educate me. I tried to repay her afterwards, 
but the debt of a child to his mother, you know, is one of 
the debts we can never pay." 

The county court with its court-house was settled 
at Danville, but a county academy was established in 
Peacham, an adjoining town, and Mrs. Stevens moved 
from Danville to Peacham to educate her boys. To 
her mind the schoolroom was better than the court 
room. The Peacham Academy, established in 1795. 
has had a long career of usefulness, and in its early 
days it attained an enviable reputation as a good fitting 
school for college. 

Stevens' academy days there were without unusual 
event. The one event that has survived the humdrum 

1 McCall, p. 8. 



EARLY DAYS 5 

of his school life was his rebellion, with twelve other 
students, against a rule forbidding " tragedies, come- 
dies and other theatrical performances." The rebel- 
lious students were censured by the board of control 
for proceeding to exhibit a " tragedy " on the evening 
of September 4, 181 1. This was denounced by the au- 
thorities as " contrary to the known rules and orders 
of the school and the express prohibition of the precep- 
tor, a gross violation of the rules and by-laws of the 
institution, tending to subvert all order and subordina- 
tion in said school, and to disturb the peace of the 
Society." The students were required to sign articles 
of submission asserting that upon reflection they were 
convinced that they had done wrong, and promising 
that as long as they continued students of the academy 
they would observe the rules laid down by the board. 
It is said that Stevens signed this paper with reluctance 
and chagrin, and that he soon thereafter completed his 
preparation for college. 

Stevens entered Dartmouth as a sophomore in the 
fall of 181 1 in his twentieth year. He spent one or 
two terms of his college life in the University of Ver- 
mont (1812-13), but he returned to Dartmouth and 
graduated there in 1814. 1 Then, as now, Dartmouth 

1 A story is told of Stevens' rife while at the University of 
Vermont, which illustrates his character. An obstinate farmer 
insisted upon letting his cow run loose for pasturage on the 
college campus. This was irritating, especially at commence- 
ment time, and some of the students made way with the cow. 
Stevens and another student had killed the animal, perhaps while 
carrying a practical joke farther than they intended. The irate 
farmer demanded payment and a certain student who was alto- 
gether innocent of the deed, but whom circumstantial evidence 
seemed to convict, was about to be expelled from college. 
Stevens and his guilty comrade could not see the innocent suffer 
for their wrong-doing while they escaped by silence. They deter- 



6 THE LIFE OF THADDEUS STEVENS 

was one of the leading colleges of New England. It 
then numbered, approximately, as many graduates in 
a decade as Harvard, Princeton, or Yale, and its presi- 
dent and faculty were as well-known in the world of 
learning. Doctor John Wheelock, the son of the dis- 
tinguished Eleazar Wheelock who had founded Dart- 
mouth nearly half a century before, was President 
when Stevens came. George Ticknor had graduated 
there in 1807 and Daniel Webster in 1801. 

It was a restricted classical course that was laid 
out for Stevens in his college days, consisting chiefly 
of the Latin and Greek classics and the higher mathe- 
matics, with the addition of mental and moral philos- 
ophy, and perhaps a study of the Greek Testament. 

Stevens studied well, appreciating his time and oppor- 
tunity and keeping in mind, no doubt, the sacrifices of 
his mother for his education. His training in the 
classics gave accuracy and precision to his style of 
speech, and while in his subsequent public speeches he 
professed to despise form and rhetorical rules, the 
clearness of his thought and the directness and force of 
his speeches gave to his sentences a grammatical qual- 
ity that would always stand the test of criticism. His 
classical studies and logical mathematical processes al- 
ways stood him in good place. 

Stevens was twenty-two when he graduated from 
Dartmouth. He had determined to study law, and 

mined to make a clean breast of the matter and confessed 
fully to the owner of the cow. He generously refused to take 
pay for his lost property and shielded the culprits while exoner- 
ating the student under suspicion. The interesting sequel of the 
story is that years afterward Stevens, who was ever mindful of 
1a friendly act, sent the farmer a gold watch and chain with a 
draft for more than the value of the cow. (McCall, p. 18.) 



EARLY DAYS 7 

in order to support himself while pursuing his studies, 
he taught for a year in Peacham. The following year, 
moved partly by the spirit of youthful venture and 
from a desire to find a wider opportunity for the future 
practise of his chosen profession, he went to York, 
Pennsylvania, where through the influence of Samuel 
Merrill, a friend and former teacher of Stevens, he had 
secured a position as instructor in the academy of 
York. This important step in Stevens' life was pro- 
moted primarily by the influence of Merrill. Samuel 
Merrill was a Peacham boy and, like Stevens, was a 
graduate of Dartmouth. He and Stevens seem to have 
been very close friends. In a letter written by Stevens 
to Merrill in 1814, a gossipy account is given of mar- 
riages and other personal matters in Peacham and of 
college affairs at Dartmouth. He spoke of an uncom- 
mon epidemic at Peacham, 

" which it is sincerely hoped will thin the ranks of our old 
maids and send their withered ghosts to the dominion of 
that old tyrant Hymen." He told of the literary societies 
at Hanover ; that " Old Josh Holt is President of the fra- 
ternity ; " that " Joseph Tracy, Gent, has been loaded with 
Phi Betian honors, Kent likewise;" that " Fisk is the 
Social's orator. Sam Wells hopes to be the Frater's, but 
is loosing [ ?] popularity. Charles Leverett has entered into 
the service of the aristocracy, in the capacity of scullion ; 
and it is expected, as a reward for his services, he will be 
knighted, i. e., elected Phi Betian." ..." Those fawning 
parasites who are grasping at unmerited honors, seem for 
once to have blundered into the truth, — that they must 
flatter the nobility, or remain in obscurity; that they must 
degrade themselves by sycophancy, or others will not exalt 
them. The democracy rule in the fraternity. The aristoc- 
racy make threatening grimaces, but it is only sport for us 



8 THE LIFE OF THADDEUS STEVENS 

poor plebeians." ..." Friend Sam, I assure you, you can 
hardly conceive the anxiety your friends feel for you in 
that distant country. Considering you exposed to the in- 
vincible charms of those fair Dutch wenches, with their 
dozen pair of petticoats, they are really afraid that you will 
lose your heart or get lost with Goodie Twiller's ladle, in 
one corner of their pockets ; that filthy lucre will induce 
you to become the son-in-law to some Ten-Breeches, and 
then we shall despair of seeing you again." 

Stevens in his letter then spoke of his anticipated 
graduation from Dartmouth the following August, — 
"unless honored with degradation" — and then he 
would confront the necessity of entering into a school. 
" If you think," he wrote, " that I could be sure of em- 
ployment in Pennsylvania, I should like very well to 
come into those parts. If you know of any vacancies 
and could assist me, without trouble to yourself, you 
would do me a favor." He closes with his compli- 
ments to Merrill's brother and to Mr. Blanchard. 

This letter explains Stevens' coming to Pennsyl- 
vania. 1 It shows a feeling that was a part of his 

1 The Samuel Merrill to whom Stevens wrote, was a man of 
unusual parts, who became one of the pioneer commonwealth- 
builders of Indiana. He removed to Indiana in 1816, the year 
in which the state was admitted to the Union. He was a mem- 
ber of the Legislature which selected Indianapolis as the capital 
of the state, and he assisted in giving the name to the capital 
city. He was elected Treasurer of State in 1820, a position 
which he held for twelve years. In 1820 he helped to remove 
the state archives and property from Corydon, the old capital, 
to Indianapolis. After retiring from the state treasurership, he 
helped to organize the State Bank of Indianapolis and was its 
President for many years. This was one of the few state banks 
of the time to win financial success and honor. Merrill after- 
ward became President of the Indianapolis and Madison Rail- 
road, the first railroad in Indiana. He died in 1855, an honored 
citizen of the state. His descendants have won distinction in 
the civic and educational life of Indiana, in the professions and 
in business, and many of them have rendered notable service to 
the commonwealth. 



EARLY DAYS 9 

whole life, of sympathy and fellowship for the " poor 
plebeian " against the " aristocracy." ' His remarks 
about the " Pennsylvanian Dutch " were merely idle 
cajolery and should not be taken to indicate a lack 
of sympathy or appreciation of that worthy stock with 
many of whose representatives Stevens afterward en- 
tered into many and enduring ties of friendship. 

At York in Pennsylvania, a county seat of impor- 
tance, Stevens pursued the study of the law. As a 
teacher and as a student of law, he was diligent in his 
studies and retiring in his habits. He had begun his 
legal studies in Vermont under Judge Mattocks; he 
now continued them diligently in York under David 
Casset, a leader of the local bar. 

The familiar account of his admission to the bar 
was afterward related by Stevens. For some unex- 
plained reason he did not apply for admission in York. 
Some rule of bench or bar may have made his 
admission difficult if not impossible, probably the rule 
that forbade a man's admission to the bar while he was 
pursuing some other occupation. At any rate he rode 
on horseback to Bel Air, the county seat of Harford 
County, Maryland, the adjoining county to York, and 
presented himself, an entire stranger, for membership 
at the bar. Theodore Bland, Zebulon Hollingsworth, 
and Joseph H. Nicholson were the judges presiding. 
Their committee on the examination of the applicant 
learned that young Stevens had read Blackstone, Coke 
upon Littleton, Gilbert on Evidence and a work on 
Pleading, and that he knew some of the elementary 
legal definitions. Before this strenuous examination 
began, the aspiring candidate was informed that a 



io THE LIFE OF THADDEUS STEVENS 

couple of bottles of good Madeira were requisite, and 
as the examination drew to a close two more bottles 
were required. As the quality of Stevens' wine passed 
the sampling process of the dignified judges, his certif- 
icate was signed and he was duly admitted to the bar. 
The " subsequent proceedings " consisted of a game of 
" fiploo " before a crowd of spectators, a game that 
was new to Stevens and in which he lost a considerable 
part of the fifty dollars that he had brought with 
him to court. The minutes of the court recording his 
admission are as follows : 

" Upon the application of Stevenson Archer, Esq., 
for the admission of Thaddeus Stevens, Esq., as an 
attorney of this court, the said Thaddeus Stevens is ad- 
mitted as an attorney of this court and thereupon takes 
and signs the several oaths prescribed by law, and re- 
peats and signs a declaration of his belief in the Chris- 
tian religion." 

A son of this Stevenson Archer, bearing the same 
name, entered Congress in March, 1867. After he was 
sworn in, Stevens came over and shook hands with him 
and inquired whether he was the son of the Judge 
Archer, of Maryland, on whose motion Stevens had 
been admitted to practise law. On learning that such 
was the case, Stevens indulged in the reminiscences 
from which this account is substantially drawn. 1 

The day after his admission to the bar, Stevens rode 
back to Pennsylvania. He narrowly escaped drown- 
ing while crossing the Susquehanna at McCall's Ferry. 
He revisited York, but decided not to settle there. He 

1 Hensel, W. U., Thaddeus Stevens as a Country Lawyer, p. 4» 



EARLY DAYS n 

went to Lancaster and inspected that flourishing and 
interesting town, but for some reason unknown he 
turned aside from its opportunities and went to Gettys- 
burg, the county seat of Adams County, the town that 
has given its name to the most famous battle in Amer- 
ican history. There he settled to begin practise, start- 
ing " upon his career as a lawyer, without friends, 
fame, family, or fortune." 1 

For a number of years in Gettysburg he experienced 
the life of the struggling young lawyer. On a meager 
budget of income and expenses and while waiting for 
clients, he spent his leisure hours in intelligent and 
diligent reading, thus adding to his store of literary and 
historical knowledge that he was afterward able to 
draw upon with such effect, j His success at the law 
seemed at first doubtful even to himself. But it was 
not long until a case came to him by which he was able 
to attain to success and reputation. He was called 
upon to defend a murderer, a defense that no other 
lawyer seemed willing to assume. Stevens undertook 
the case and managed it with such ability, adroitness 
and skill that, while he was not able to secure an ac- 
quittal for his client, who was notoriously guilty and 
was hanged for his crime, he attracted attention and 
favorable comment from the bar and from the com- 
munity. Stevens put up a plea of insanity for his 
client, which was not a very usual plea in those days. 
Stevens himself believed in the plea, since many years 
later, after he had been the attorney for the defense in 
more than fifty other murder cases, in all of which he 

1 Hensel, W. U. 



12 THE LIFE OF THADDEUS STEVENS 

was successful, he asserted that every one of the de- 
fendants deserved conviction but this one, who, as 
Stevens averred, was insane. 

It is asserted that Stevens received a fee of fifteen 
hundred dollars in this case. This has been doubted, 
as it is thought unlikely that such a fee in those days 
would be paid to an unknown local lawyer by a mur- 
derer who was unable to have his case appealed, and 
who was hanged for his crime. But it is certain that 
Stevens ever looked upon this case as the beginning of 
his professional success. 

He soon came to the front of the Adams County 
bar, with a general and lucrative practise. From 1821 
to 1830 he appeared in almost every important case 
at the local bar, and in the various appeals to the Su- 
preme Court in which Stevens appeared he won in 
nine out of ten, securing six reversals from the decis- 
ion of the lower court. He was now the recipient of 
lucrative fees, he had won local fame as a lawyer and 
had attained honorable standing and reputation 
throughout his adopted county. He was ready, well 
equipped, and the time had come for his entrance into 
public life. 



CHAPTER II 

THE EARLY ANTI-MASON 

QTEVENS' first appearance in public life was in 
^ 1833, when he became a member of the Pennsyl- 
vania Legislature, from Adams County. 1 He had 
formerly been in sympathy with the Federalist party, 
and after the disappearance of that party he took 
no active part in politics until the appearance of 
the Anti-Masonic party in 1829. The disappearance 
and probable murder of Morgan in New York State 
had caused much agitation against the Free Masons, 
and a political party arose pledged to oppose the power 
and influence of this oath-bound secret order whose 
members, it was asserted, were banded together to con- 
trol the government and to direct or prevent the admin- 
istration of the courts and the laws in their own in- 
terests. Stevens became one of the adherents and 
leaders of this new party in Pennsylvania. He re- 

1 This, Doctor McCarthy, the historian of the Anti-Masonic 
party, calls the most significant fact in the history of Anti-Masonry 
in Pennsylvania. At this time Stevens was described by one of 
his political opponents as " a lawyer of much cunning and adroit- 
ness and of considerable celebrity. He was originally an East- 
ern man, and has been all his life a uniform and undeviating 
Federalist, a warm friend of John Quincy Adams and a vio- 
lent opponent of General Jackson. He is now the great lumi- 
nary of Anti-Masonry in Adams County, within whose orbit all 
the lesser planets of the new system revolve and reflect the light 
he dispenses." Pennsylvania Reporter, March 23, 1830, cited in 
McCarthy's " Anti-Masonic Party," American Historical Associa- 
tion Reports, 1903, p. 456. 

J 3 



14 THE LIFE OF THADDEUS STEVENS 

garded Masonry as an imperium in imperio and he did 
not hesitate to denounce the lodge as " a secret, oath- 
bound, murderous institution that endangered the con- 
tinuance of Republican Government." 

In 1829 the Anti-Masonic party in Pennsylvania, 
with Stevens as one of its leaders, made a campaign 
for the governorship, running Joseph Ritner as its 
candidate for Governor. In 1831 this party held a 
National Convention and nominated William Wirt as 
its candidate for President. Stevens was one of 
the prominent figures of this convention, the first in the 
history of American politics after the pattern of the 
modern presidential nominating convention. Among 
other prominent supporters of this strange new party 
were J. Q. Adams, William H. Seward, John Marshall, 
Richard Rush, Amasa Walker,. Myron Holly, and 
William Slade. 

As a member of this first historic nominating con- 
vention Stevens made a notable speech arraigning the 
unrepublican spirit of Free Masonry. He com- 
plained of the unfair and discriminating silence of the 
press. The papers had made no mention of the con- 
vention and the people scarcely knew of it. " Not one- 
fourth part of the people of Philadelphia know that you 
are in session," and this he regarded as evidence enough 
that there was " an influence operating higher than 
human curiosity and higher than the laws of the land." 
You are here in the presence of grave charges brought 
against public men and facing important disclosures 
of vital interest to the public, " yet the papers which 
surround you are as silent as the grave," while on 



THE EARLY ANTI-MASON 15 

the other hand, the opposition press " brand the efforts 
of Anti-Masonry with infamy." 

Stevens proceeded to defend the morality of the 
men who had disclosed the oaths and secrets of Free 
Masonry. He denounced the lodge as an improper 
banding together of men under oath of mutual support, 
to secure immunity in improper conduct and to pro- 
mote one another to improper place and power, — to 
secure power for other than public ends in every place 
where power is of importance. " Look around : 
Though but one hundred thousand of the people of the 
United States are Free Masons, yet almost all the 
offices of high profit and high honor are filled with 
gentlemen of that institution. Out of the number of 
law judges in the State of Pennsylvania, eighteen- 
twentieths are Masons ; and twenty-two out of twenty- 
four states of the Union are now governed by Masonic 
chief magistrates. Although not a twentieth part of 
the voters of this commonwealth, and of the United 
States are Masons, yet they have contrived, by con- 
cert, to put themselves into eighteen out of twenty of 
the offices of profit and power. I defy contradiction to 
this statement." 

Since this was so, Stevens wished to know whether 
it was because the uninitiated were not fit for office 
or whether the members of the lodge acted secretly 
upon the malign principles that had been disclosed. 
He further denounced Masonry as an irreligious and 
blasphemous institution, and he called upon the people 
to exclude " with a sorrowful but determined force, 
from all places of power, those who still belong to the 



16 THE LIFE OF THADDEUS STEVENS 

institution, and to put them out from all communion 
with the holy and the good." l 

It was as a member of this party and with firm, con- 
victions in its cause that Stevens came to the State 
Legislature of Pennsylvania in 1833. He soon of- 
fered a resolution proposing to inquire into the ex- 
pediency of a law making membership in a Masonic 
lodge sufficient cause of peremptory challenge in court, 
when one of the parties, and not both, was a Mason, 
and in all criminal cases if the defendant was a Mason; 
and that a Masonic judge should be barred from trying 
a case if one of the parties in the suit was a Mason. 
This resolution of Stevens was defeated by the narrow 
margin of eleven votes. 

Stevens believed that Masonry, standing for secrecy, 
" implied shame and guilt " ; that the members of the 
order, if called upon to act as witnesses, magistrates, 
sheriffs, jurors, or legislators, would violate their oaths 
and their most sacred obligations in these civil rela- 
tions; that they would spirit away witnesses, perjure 
themselves in court, and do whatever they found neces- 
sary to prevent the attainment of judicial justice, in 
order to shield their fellow-members. Accordingly he 
and the honest men of his party believed that Masonry 
threatened the existence of free institutions. 

In 1834 Stevens offered another resolution in the 
Legislature, instructing the judiciary committee to bring- 
in a bill for the suppression of Masonry. This also 
was defeated, but in the following year he secured the 
appointment of a committee to investigate the evils of 
Free Masonry and other secret societies. As the com- 

1 Speech, 1831, Christian Cynosure, April 5, 1883. 



THE EARLY ANTI-MASON 17 

mittee had no power to commit witnesses for contempt, 
it could not compel the Masons whom it summoned to 
testify, and consequently its investigations amounted to 
but little. 

This committee service, however, gave Stevens an 
opportunity to make a report, and this he couched in 
characteristic language. It was desirable, he said, that 
the government and the judges of the courts should be 
summoned as witnesses. This would enable the public 
to learn how far Masonry secures political and exec- 
utive power; whether applications for office have been 
founded on Masonic merit and claimed on Masonic 
rights ; whether the " significant symbols " and the 
" mystic watchword " of Masonry have been used in 
procuring executive patronage; how many convicted 
felons who have been pardoned by the present govern- 
ment are " brethren of the mystic tie " and connected 
by blood and politics with members of that institution ; 
and whether, before the judges, " the grand hailing 
sign had ever been handed, sent, or thrown to them 
by either of the parties litigant, and if so, what had 
been the result of the trial." 

One at this day is disposed to have very little sym- 
pathy with the designs of the Anti-Masons and he 
reads with some amazement that so many men and so 
many leading minds were led to become members of 
this ephemeral party. But if one examines carefully 
into the motives governing the members of the Anti- 
Masonic party and of its leaders, like Stevens, he will 
find that the movement was very largely prompted 
by an earnest desire to secure freedom and equality 
among all citizens and to prevent the establishment of 



iS THE LIFE OF THADDEUS STEVENS 

orders and ranks that seemed calculated to promote 
special privileges among men. Here again it was 
Stevens' democracy and love of free institutions, his 
love of " equal rights and unshackled republicanism " 
that controlled him, that led him to become a promoter 
of the Anti-Masonic Movement. Whatever we may- 
think of the peculiar tenets of this party it is entitled 
to respect for its fundamental political doctrine, — the 
supremacy of the laics. The honest Anti-Masons 
favored a government of laws, equally, openly, and 
justly administered, and it was their belief that Free 
Masonry was opposed to this fundamental principle 
of our civil institutions. The advocates of Anti- 
Masonry always and consistently contended that the 
selection of men for office should ever be subservient 
to these principles and never should these principles be 
subservient to the elevation of men. Such was 
Stevens' political faith. There can be no doubt of 
Stevens' deep and sincere convictions in the Anti- 
Masonic cause, and no one of its advocates could set 
forth that cause with greater ability or a more trenchant 
eloquence than he. 

In 1835, in response to an invitation extended to him 
by citizens of Washington County, Maryland, Mr. 
Stevens attended an Anti-Masonic meeting in Hagers- 
town and delivered a speech. An extended extract 
from that speech may not be out of place, since it shows 
Stevens' youthful fire and illustrates the heated political 
literature of the Anti-Masonic conflict. Whatever one 
may think of the merit of his main contention he is 
bound to acknowledge the invigorating and courageous 
quality of Stevens' eloquence. Among other things he 



THE EARLY ANTI-MASON 19 

said : " Wherever the Genius of Liberty has set a 
people free, the first object of their solicitude should 
be the destruction of Free Masonry and all other secret 
societies. Where tyrants rule they are fit engines of 
despotism, but under free republican government se- 
cret societies are dangerous and are not to be tolerated. 

" The oaths of Free Masons are inconsistent with 
pure morals, true religion, and the permanent existence 
of liberty. . . . They swear to promote one another's 
political preferment. This vow is not a dead letter. 
It is acted on throughout the Union. Twenty of the 
twenty- four states are governed by Masons. They 
hold two-thirds of the offices. None but a Mason can 
be President. Henry Clay is Grand Master of Ken- 
tucky. All this monopoly of power is brought about 
by a band of men constituting less than one-twentieth 
of our voters. Surely there is a magic influence in 
Free Masonry. It corrupts the fountains of justice; 
stays the arm of the law; stops the regular action of 
government ; binds the mind in darkness. 

" Two things are indispensable to the continuance 
of national liberty, — the independence of the public 
press and the impartial administration of justice. The 
tyranny of Masonry destroys both. This prostituted 
harlot has entered the courts of justice and seduced the 
venerable judges into her foul embrace. They, too, 
seek to extricate their brothers, whether right or 
wrong. 

" How can the evil be destroyed ? Undermine its 
foundation, — the hope of power and place. It is 
founded on selfishness, love of gain, personal ambition, 
desire of emolument. Remove these or it will con- 



20 THE LIFE OF THADDEUS STEVENS 

tinue to flourish. Refuse to trust Masons with any 
office of profit or trust, until they are shorn of their 
locks and become as other men. Turn their weapons 
against themselves. Think not to dissolve this insti- 
tution by appealing to their moral feeling. It would 
be useless to attempt to touch the feelings of the heart. 
They would but sneer. It is idle folly to address the 
sympathies of political partisans. Although they were 
touched in strains as tender as the mournful music of 
Orpheus, it would fall unavailingly on listless ears. It 
would sooner wring compassion from the heart of 
Cerberus and his infernal attendants. 

" Has this institution outgrown the law, become 
stronger than the civil power, or the will of a sovereign 
people? Has this base-born issue of a foreign sire be- 
come so powerful, that even the Young Lion of Amer- 
ican Liberty can not crush him? Is this bloody god 
too strong for us to overcome ? Then let us tremble at 
his power, fall down, bow ourselves in the dust before 
him and supplicate his favor. For my single self I 
would rather be the victim of his fury than the slave of 
his favor. 

" Some are afraid of being in the minority, — tame 
souls who delight to dwell on neutral ground, who 
tremble lest they should mistake the strong side, who 
hover around the confines of the battle-field ready to 
throw up their caps and shout hosannas to the victors. 
Such men we would advise to remain where they are, 
in dull and useless sloth fulness. Those who are not 
with us in moral feeling we are better without. We 
want no hireling forces. Those who address them- 
selves to this warfare must do it from love of country. 



THE EARLY ANTI-MASON 21 

Who would not rather be vanquished with honorable 
associates than triumph with a horde of mercenary 
traitors? If you must fall you will have the consola- 
tion to know that you have lived while there was any- 
thing worth living for. . . . Who would not rather be- 
come food for worms while the lamp of liberty may yet 
light him to his grave than to survive its extinguish- 
ment, to grope through ages of the darkness of despo- 
tism, a trembling coward slave? Who would not 
rather sleep with honor in the Spartan's grave side by 
side with Leonidas and his little band of martyred 
patriots than to ride triumphant over a prostrate world 
with the principles and in company of Neroes and 
Caligulas ? If any such recreant freemen there are, let 
them turn and flee." 1 

The Gettysburg Republican Compiler published a re- 
port of this speech in a letter from Hagerstown, and 
with the report, published some personal reflections 
upon the speaker, which became the basis of a suit for 
libel brought by Stevens. The letter described Stevens 
as " a stout man, about forty years of age, with a bald 
head, and lame." It charged him with impudence in 
presuming to instruct the citizens of another state, — 
no foreign influence should direct or control the course 
of the citizens of Maryland ; it asserted that the speaker 
was incapable of feeling aright on any matter and that 
his speech was " a compound of the vilest slanders, 
most barefaced falsehoods and pandemoniac malignity 
against respectable citizens that ever fell from the lips 
of any man." With a jibe at Stevens' Yankee extrac- 

1 " Free Masonry Unmasked," 1835. Pamphlet of The His- 
torical Society of Pennsylvania. 



22 THE LIFE OF THADDEUS STEVENS 

tion the writer asserted that " this Anti-Masonry was 
not born in Pennsylvania, but was imported from that 
part of our country whose people are proverbial for 
their tricks and frauds, as the venders of the most 
worthless and deceptive commodities, — flannel sau- 
sages, wooden nutmegs, and horn gun-flints." 

This seems strong enough for ordinary political war- 
fare, but there must have been other parts of the letter 
that were used in the successful libel suit that Stevens 
brought against the publisher, as the defendant, Jacob 
Le fever, was convicted, fined fifty dollars, and sen- 
tenced to three months' imprisonment. But Governor 
Wolf, a Mason, as Stevens expressed it, " extricated his 
brother by pardoning him." 

Because of divisions among the Democrats, the 
AYhigs and Anti-Masons combined were able to carry 
Pennsylvania in 1835. They elected Ritner, an Anti- 
Mason, to the governorship and these united parties 
controlled the lower house of the Legislature, and, on a 
joint vote, both houses. Stevens was regarded as one 
of the confidential advisers of the Governor, a member 
of his " Yankee Kitchen Cabinet." Some of the dis- 
senting Democrats who had supported Muhlenberg for 
Governor against Governor Wolf, the regular nominee 
of the party, were inclined to vote with the Anti- 
Masonic-Whig combination. They were dissatisfied 
because of increased taxation resulting from the free 
school law and from canal construction. Governor 
Ritner interpreted this election as a triumph of Anti- 
Masonry and in his first message he asserted that the 
supremacy of the laws and the equal rights of the peo- 
ple should be maintained, " whether assailed by indi- 



THE EARLY ANTI-MASON 23 

viduals or by secret sworn associations. The people 
have willed the destruction of secret societies and that 
will can not be disregarded." 

On December 7, 1835, Stevens introduced into the 
Legislature a bill to suppress secret societies bound to- 
gether by unlawful oaths, and on December 19, a com- 
mittee of five, with Stevens as chairman, was appointed 
to investigate the evils of Free Masonry, with power 
to send for persons and papers. Stevens immediately 
summoned Ex-Governor Wolf and other political op- 
ponents to appear before the committee, and upon their 
refusal to take any notice of the summons he offered 
a resolution in the House " to compel the attendance 
of these and other delinquent witnesses." It was voted 
to bring these men before the committee by authority 
of the House. There was much excitement and an in- 
terested crowd of spectators came to the sessions of the 
committee to hear the secrets of Masonry revealed, and 
Stevens' committee was ridiculed and denounced by his 
Masonic opponents as " An Old Woman's Curiosity 
Convention," with Stevens as " Chief Old Woman," or 
the " Arch Priest of Anti-Masonry." The Masons 
who were summoned refused to answer the questions 
that were put to them, and each read a lengthy protest 
instead. Stevens then arranged to have twenty-five of 
them arraigned before the House and as " prisoners at 
the bar to be committed to the charge of the sergeant- 
at-arms until delivered by due course of law." The 
House soon tired of its prisoners and ordered their 
release, the Whig allies of the Anti-Masons failing to 
give their continued support. 

Stevens' investigation was defeated, but in a speech 



24 THE LIFE OF THADDEUS STEVENS 

of March 5, 1836, he vowed everlasting opposition to 
the " unholy orders." " Sir," he said, " I will go home 
again in a minority, and call again and again upon the 
people and will either succeed in crushing that polluting 
order, which will sustain itself by trampling over the 
best interests of the country, or will go down to the 
grave never faltering in a righteous cause." He be- 
lieved that the people would soon perceive that there 
was " no other question than Masonry and Anti- 
Masonry." x 

As the campaign of 1836 came on, divisions appeared 
in the ranks of the Pennsylvania Anti-Masons. Some 
favored the nomination of General Harrison for the 
presidency ; but Stevens and the more radical members 
of the party protested. Stevens took it upon himself 
to submit a series of questions to Harrison. He 
wished to know whether Harrison believed that oath- 
bound secret societies were an evil and inconsistent 
with the genius and safety of republican government 
and whether he would join his Anti-Masonic fellow- 
citizens in using " constitutional, fair, and honorable 
means for their final and effectual suppression." Har- 
rison answered that the attempt to exercise such au- 
thority might be conducive of more mischief than the 
evils it was proposed to remedy. The answer was not 
satisfactory to Stevens, and he threw the weight of his 
influence to Webster as the Anti-Jackson candidate. 
But a state convention of the Anti-Masons in Decem- 
ber, 1835, refused to send delegates to an Anti-Masonic 
National Convention, and it proceeded to nominate 

1 McCarthy, "Anti-Masonic Party," American Historical Asso- 
ciation Papers, 1903, pp. 474-475. 



THE EARLY ANTI-MASON 25 

Harrison and Granger for President and Vice-Presi- 
dent, whereupon the radicals led by Stevens protested 
and withdrew from further participation in the pro- 
ceedings. 

The seceding Anti-Masons proposed to hold a Na- 
tional Convention in May, and appointed delegates 
to it. Stevens and Amos Ellmaker were among the 
delegates appointed. The address which they issued 
throws light upon Stevens' extreme spirit of Anti- 
Masonry. This address charged that the Masonic- 
Whig State Convention which had declared for Harri- 
son had been influenced, if not controlled, by Masons, 
or "strenuous defenders of the lodge," or by those 
who were made to believe that the road to patronage 
and public office led on through support of Harrison. 
This convention, the address asserted, had sat with 
closed doors, like a Star Chamber, and had voted down 
a resolution asking General Harrison to declare him- 
self for Anti-Masonic principles. Stevens' address 
called upon every true Anti-Mason in the state to re- 
fuse to sanction this coalition, but to hold himself 
bound by the decisions of the National Convention 
soon to be held. There was to be no repose in defense 
of equal rights but the armor was to buckled on anew 
" to meet and again to overthrow the evil monster 
whose slightest touch is pollution." * 

This appeal was not effective in arousing a popular 
response; the policy of continuing a political party on 
the one idea of opposition to Masonry was dying out ; 
the party was being absorbed into the general Whig- 
movement, and the Whig National Convention having 
1 McCarthy, " Anti-Masonic Party," p. 481. 



26 THE LIFE OF THADDEUS STEVENS 

nominated Harrison, Stevens was compelled by his 
spirit of opposition to the Jacksonian Democracy to 
come to Harrison's support, though, no doubt, his sup- 
port was lukewarm, while many of the radical Anti- 
Masons refused to vote for Harrison. The elections 
in the state in 1836 went against the Whigs and the 
Anti-Masons, and Stevens was not returned to the 
Legislature. The result is accounted for by the 
" fiasco of his investigation and by his arbitrary meas- 
ures in regard to Masonry." * 

But the lack of unity and cohesion in the Anti-Ma- 
sonic-Whig combination, their party quarrels and 
schisms, and their divisions on state issues, offer a 
more probable cause for their defeat. 

One should not be led into the error of supposing 
from this account that Stevens was so absorbed in this 
period of his life with the cause of Anti-Masonry that 
he was indifferent to all other political and public ques- 
tions of the time. The anti-slavery cause and the 
cause of free schools, as we shall see, occupied much 
of his interest and attention. He offered a resolution 
in the Legislature instructing Pennsylvania's delega- 
tion in Congress to favor internal improvements by 
promoting measures for improving the navigation of 
the Ohio. He proposed a Pennsylvania charter for 
the second United States Bank, which Jackson was 
pounding to its death. This showed Stevens' Anti- 
Jackson temper. Other national and local interests in 
public affairs required his time and labor. In 1838 
he became canal commissioner of the state, which gave 
him control of considerable patronage, and one of his 

1 McCarthy, p. 483. 



THE EARLY ANTI-MASON 27 

political opponents and colleagues in Congress asserted 
in later years that he " inaugurated a system of colon- 
ization for political effect which politicians have im- 
proved upon and practised more or less ever since." * 
When Porter beat Ritner for Governor of Pennsyl- 
vania in 1838, Stevens made what some of his friendly 
critics consider to be the capital mistake of his early 
political life. He and his party managers, believing 
they had been beaten by fraud, determined to treat the 
election as if it had not occurred. This brought on 
the " Buckshot War," which, though it wrought no 
great revolution in politics, assisted in taking Stevens 
out of public life for a number of years. The account 
of that bloodless war it is now in place to give. 

1 Judge Woodward Memorial Address on the Life of Stevens, 
Congressional Globe, 188, p. 72. 



CHAPTER III 

THE BUCKSHOT WAR 

/ "T" V HE " Buckshot War " was the outcome of election 
■*■ disputes in Philadelphia County in 1838. The 
control of the Legislature depended on the Philadelphia 
contest, and a seat in the United States Senate was at 
stake. If the Whig candidates were elected from this 
county that party could control the Legislature; if the 
Democrat candidates were elected, the Legislature 
would be Democratic. One set of partisan returning 
officers made out a return in favor of the Whigs, an- 
other set made out a return in favor of the Democrats. 
The Whigs claimed the disputed district of Northern 
Liberties by one thousand votes, but the judges de- 
clared that the whole district should be thrown out, and 
this elected the Democratic ticket. Burrowes, the 
Whig Secretary of State, who was also chairman of 
the Whig State Campaign Committee, recognized the 
Whig returns, which he had received first, in due and 
legal form. The Democratic return was later and not 
so regular. Burrowes also declared, in a Whig party 
address, that the Democratic majority in the state had 
been secured by fraud, that the Whigs should immedi- 
ately begin an investigation and proceed as if they had 
not been defeated in the recent election. 1 

1 This is printed in Niles' Register under the caption, "Ad- 
dress of the Democratic State Committee to the Friends of 

28 



THE BUCKSHOT WAR 29 

The Whig contestants were thus recognized by the 
constituted authority as having legal certificates of elec- 
tion. Were they to be allowed to take their seats and 
vote upon all questions relating to the permanent or- 
ganization of the House? If so, their party would be 
able to obtain permanent control. Stevens was the 
Whig leader. He published an able argument in favor 
of this plan of procedure. He argued most plausibly 
that the only way to organize the House was to swear 
in the members who had been designated in the legal 
returns. There must be a prima facie decision as to 
the contested seats. It was absurd to say that this de- 
cision should be postponed until all the undisputed re- 
turns were read and to allow only those members whose 
election was undisputed to decide as to the disputed 
ones; because, until the House was organized and a 
Speaker elected, it was not competent to entertain any 
question, and if there could be no initial decision as to 
disputed seats and such decisions had to be postponed 
until the House was organized, officers elected, and 
committees appointed, it would be very easy to con- 
test any number or all of the seats, and no one would 
be left to act as umpires and judges. Until the House 
was organized no members were competent to vote 
as to the right of other members to their seats. " They 
must in every instance be sitting members upon the 
returns furnished by the secretary of the common- 
wealth; the only way the sitting members can be un- 
seated is by a petition presented by the claiming mem- 
Joseph Ritner." It appears that the name " Democratic " was 
too popular to allow its being monopolized by the " Van Buren 
Democrats." 



30 THE LIFE OF THADDEUS STEVENS 

bers, and that petition referred to a committee selected 
by lot, according to the act of 1791, whose report is 
final and conclusive." 

Such was Stevens' argument. It is difficult to see a 
loophole in it from the standpoint of law and Amer- 
ican parliamentary procedure. 1 

As the day approached for the organization of the 
Legislature crowds of party contestants came to the 
state capitol. Threats of violence were made, and it 
was asserted that bayonets were to bristle at Harris- 
burg. The Democrats rallied their forces; commit- 
tees of safety came from Philadelphia ; leaders were 
appointed ; armed belligerents filled the town, and when 
the House met for its first session " the hall was 
crowded to the door with outsiders." 2 

Stevens' address to his constituents described the 
situation as follows : " An unusual number of people 
filled the galleries and lobby. Several of the aisles, 
and the open space in front of the Speaker's chair, 
were choked up with rude-looking strangers, and the 
chairs of several members were surrounded with rough 
brawny bullies. My seat had the honor of being 
guarded by eight or ten of the most desperate brawlers 
of Kensington and Spring Garden, who thrust them- 
selves determinedly against my chair, and when I left 
it occasionally, one of them occupied it until my re- 
turn. Most of them wore coats with outside pockets 
in which their hands were generally thrust; and it 
was afterward satisfactorily ascertained that they 

1 See Stevens' address to the citizens of Adams County, Penn- 
sylvania Telegraph, January 17, 1839. 

2 McCarthy, p. 497. 



THE BUCKSHOT WAR 31 

were armed .with double-barreled pistols, bowie knives, 
and dirks." * 

The result of the attempt to organize the House was 
that two Houses were organized, two Speakers were 
elected, and two sets of committees were appointed to 
inform the Governor and the Senate that the House 
was organized and ready for business. Stevens, for 
the Whigs, nominated their Speaker, appointed tellers, 
put the motion, declared his Speaker elected and con- 
ducted him to the chair. He took no counsel of 
timidity ; he w T as not governed in the least by doubt or 
hesitation. He pursued the means best calculated to 
reach the end he had in view. 

The two Speakers, Cunningham, the Whig, and Hop- 
kins, the Democrat, occupied the platform and the two 
contending factions were known as the " Hopkins 
House " and the " Stevens Rump." Of course, no 
business could be transacted. The question was, which 
of the two Houses would the Senate recognize and thus 
constitute a Legislature ? 

The Whigs had organized the Senate, greatly to the 
disgust of the Democratic partisans who had packed 
the galleries and lobbies. Violent threats were made 
against Penrose, the President of the Senate, and 
against Stevens and Burrowes, who had come to the 
Senate and were sitting as spectators. When one 
Brown, a Democratic contestant, who had been ex- 
cluded from the Senate, demanded a hearing, it was at 
first denied, and a motion made to adjourn. " A scene 
ensued which baffles description. Apparently a thou- 
sand voices cried out for Brown! Brown! and with 

1 Pennsylvania Telegraph, January 17, 1839. 



32 THE LIFE OF THADDEUS STEVENS 

the clapping, stamping, and hallooing exceeded in tu- 
mult and confusion anything ever witnessed. Finally 
Brown had leave to speak. When he had concluded 
the spectators rushed into the middle of the chamber 
and had complete possession of the place." x 

As the Harrisburg Intelligencer expressed it, when 
the new Senators (the contested Whigs) were sworn 
in, " A scene of riot ensued beyond all description, 
which finally obliged the Senate to adjourn, when the 
mob took possession of the hall." 2 When the dis- 
order had become so uproarious that the proceedings 
had to be adjourned, " Mr. Penrose and Mr. Stevens, 
with a majority of the Senators, left the hall by jump- 
ing from the windows." 3 

Stevens gives the following account of his escape on 
this occasion : " Mr. Burrowes and myself were stand- 
ing in front of them near the fire. We were urged 
several times to withdraw as the only means of safety, 
and of preventing the effusion of blood. . . . Private 
information was conveyed both to Mr. Penrose and 
myself by persons from the crowd, that the ruffians 
were arranging to 'stab' or 'knife' us. Mr. Bur- 
rowes had left the house by a back window, and, as 
the tumult grew thicker and nearer, after dark Mr. 
Penrose and myself did the same and were followed 
by a large number of gentlemen, Senators and mem- 
bers of the House, as well as others. We had scarcely 
got behind the Treasury Building when twenty or 
thirty of the mob broke out of the capitol and ran 

1 Correspondent in the Baltimore American, Niles' Register, 
Vol. 55. P- 237. 

2 Niles 45, p. 238. 

3 Writer in the Baltimore American, Niles 55, p. 237. 



THE BUCKSHOT WAR 3 $ 

round to the window whence we escaped. On seeing it 
open a person present testifies that they said, ' We are 
a minute too late/ and inquired for Penrose." 1 

Democratic writers denounced Stevens as the head 
of a Whig conspiracy, who, with his " supple coadju- 
tors," was seeking " to consummate the frauds and in- 
iquities which they have been practising upon our bleed- 
ing commonwealth during the last three years." 
" How much longer," it was asked, " are the good, 
moral, quiet citizens of Pennsylvania to be tormented 
by this arch conspirator, who has for three years agi- 
tated the commonwealth without ceasing, — who has 
been incessantly engaged in endeavoring to overturn 
our institutions, and who has been the cause of squan- 
dering millions of the people's money to construct a 
useless railroad to his iron works — to buy up bullies 
to intimidate freemen at the polls? " 

The Democratic reporter referred to Stevens as the 
oracle and the conscience-keeper of Governor Ritner, 
and it was, therefore, to be expected that his course 
would be " sinister and hypocritical." This Democratic 
journalist constantly called the Whigs the " Federal 
members, or Federal Whigs," or " our corrupt Federal 
rulers," seeking to identify them with the old unpopu- 
lar Federalist party, and he commented upon the ease 
with which Stevens " molded every Federal-Whig- 
Anti-Masonic member to his views," and " how ser- 
vilely they followed their leader and basely executed 
all his reckless commands." 

After the mob had broken up the session of the 

1 Pennsylvania Telegraph, January 17, 1839. Cited by 
McCarthy, p. 499. 



34 THE LIFE OF THADDEUS STEVENS 

Senate, the city was in the hands of rioters. The Dem- 
ocrats organized a " provisional government," and 
Whig officers hardly dared to appear upon the streets, 
and the threat was made that if they should attempt 
to organize a Legislature Harrisburg " would be 
smothered in blood." * 

Stevens, in a letter to his constituents, came back 
at his opponents, who claimed to be freemen seeking 
to vindicate the outraged liberties and rights of the 
people, by the following description of the mob. " The 
most respectable of them, the ' Captains of tens,' were 
keepers of disorderly houses in Kensington. Then 
came journeymen butchers, who were too worthless to 
find regular employment; next, professional boxers, 
who practise their pugilistic powers for hire; low gam- 
blers, who infest the oyster cellars of the suburbs. A 
portion of them consisted of a class of men whose busi- 
ness you will hardly understand, — dog-keepers who, 
in Spring Garden and Southwark, raise and train a 
ferocious breed of dogs, whom they fight weekly for 
wages, and for the amusement of the ' indignant peo- 
ple.' Their troop was flanked by a few professional 
thieves and discharged convicts. These men, gathered 
up from the hotels and hovels, were refitted with such 
cast-off clothes as their employers could command, and 
hired at fifteen dollars the head and freighted to come 
to Harrisburg to instruct the Legislature in its duties 
and protect their rights." 2 

With the mob in possession of the state-house and 
city, overawing the Senate and not permitting it to 

1 McCarthy, p. 449- 

2 Stevens' Address, Pennsylvania Telegraph, January i~, 1S39. 



THE BUCKSHOT WAR 35 

assemble, Governor Ritner issued a proclamation de- 
scribing this condition of lawlessness, ordering the mi- 
litia to be in readiness, and calling on all good citizens 
to aid in the restoration of order. By the Governor's 
order, General Patterson, in command of a division of 
the state militia, ordered out a part of his division, 
" provided with thirteen rounds of buckshot cartridges, 
and seven rounds of ball cartridges." 1 

The troops proceeded to Harrisburg and quieted 
the opposing forces. Colonel Pleasanton, of Philadel- 
phia, afterward testified under oath that McElwee, 
the Democratic leader, had told him that the Demo- 
crats were determined to prevent the arrival of these 
troops at all hazards, on the supposition that they were 
all Whigs and favorable to the state administration. 
To this end it was determined to remove some rails at 
a dangerous part on the railroad, " to form a mine 
under the most exposed part to be filled with gunpow- 
der so that in the confusion the mine might be sprung 
and the zvJwle body of them be blown into the air to- 
gether" 2 

It is difficult to believe that such bitter and reckless 
partisanship should exist among a peaceful and sober 

1 From this and from the fact that a negro was caught carry- 
ing some of this ammunition from the Whig headquarters came 
the name " Buckshot War." A verse of popular doggerel en- 
titled Last Days of Governor Ritner, ran as follows: 

" Come up and come down 
Come from country and town 

And obey the fat Deutschlander's writ, Sir; 
Come one and come all 
With buckshot and ball 
And take care of Governor Ritner." 
McCarthy, " Anti-Masonic Party," p. 500. 

2 See Niles' Register, Vol. 57, p. 27, cited in Callender, p. 41. 



36 THE LIFE OF THADDEUS STEVENS 

people, and if one is sometimes displeased at Stevens' 
extreme partisanship it is well to reflect with what he 
had to contend and the conditions under which his par- 
tisanship was begotten. 

The Governor also called on the President for a com- 
pany of the United States regulars stationed at Carlisle, 
but his request was refused by President Van Buren. 1 

During the struggle the Democrats, in order to pre- 
vent the state militia from securing arms, made a dem- 
onstration on the state arsenal, and some one, claim- 
ing to represent Stevens and the Governor, agreed with 
the Democratic leaders that no arms would be issued. 
Stevens, in a newspaper letter, repudiated this agree- 
ment, declaring that he had had no communication with 
the " rebels " and that he would " consider it disgrace- 
ful to treat with them on any subject/' 2 an attitude 
that was quite in harmony with the spirit shown by him 
in the later and larger conflicts of his public life. 

The conflict, as might be supposed while Stevens was 
leading one of the parties, was to end in no compro- 
mise. It ended in a defeat for Stevens and his faction. 
Three of his followers in the House went over to the 
Democrats, giving them a clear and undisputed major- 
ity, and thereupon the Senate recognized the Hopkins 
House, and the bloodless " Buckshot War," in which 
no shot was fired and no blood was shed, was at an end. 
So, too, was the Anti-Masonic party in Pennsylvania. 

But Stevens did not surrender. It was not his way. 
He absented himself from the House from December 

1 See debate in H. of R., 25th Congress, 32c! Session, Decem- 
ber 19, 1838, cited by McCarthy. 

2 McCall's Stevens, pp. 52, 53. 



THE BUCKSHOT WAR 37 

till May as a protest against the outcome, meanwhile 
publishing vigorous denunciations of the proceedings 
of the Democratic Legislature. The Democratic ma- 
jority decided to postpone the admission of Mr. Stev- 
ens to his seat for the present and to appoint a com- 
mittee " to inquire whether Thaddeus Stevens, a 
member elect from the county of Adams, has not for- 
feited his right to a seat in the House," — on the ground 
of non-user, mis-user, or contempt of the House. A 
number of Democratic members protested against this 
proceeding. 1 

Stevens declined to appear before this committee. 
He replied to its notification of a readiness to hear 
him, in a letter defending his right to his seat and at- 
tacking the committee. He would not agree " to ad- 
mit the intellectual, moral or habitual competency of 
Thomas B. McElwee (the mover of the resolution of 
inquiry), his compeers, coadjutors, and followers, to 
decide a question of decency and morals." His " only 
anxiety was that the Constitution may not further be 
violated and that the people may yet have some ground 
for hope that Liberty, although deeply wounded, may 
not expire." 2 

Stevens' seat was declared vacant, whereupon he 
issued an address to his constituents in Adams County, 
calling their attention to this violation of the Constitu- 
tion and to the outrage upon the rights of the people, by 
which " under a most shallow and hypocritical pre- 
tense " there was imposed upon his constituents the ex- 
pense of a new election. " The tyrants," said Stevens, 

1 Niles, 56, p. 229. 

2 Niles' Register, 56, p. 229. 



38 THE LIFE OF THADDEUS STEVENS 

" who have usurped power have determined to oppress 
and plunder the people. It is for you to say whether 
you will be their willing slaves." His inclination and 
interest both prompted him to retire from public life, 
but he would not execute that settled intention when it 
might be construed into cowardice or despondency. 
" To refuse to be a candidate now," he said, " would 
be seized upon by my enemies as an evidence that I dis- 
trust the people and am afraid to intrust to them the 
redress of their own wrongs. I feel no such fear, no 
such distrust." He, therefore, without waiting to re- 
ceive a party nomination from his friends, presented 
himself as a candidate on a question which, as he said, 
" would be disgraced by sinking it to the level of a party 
contest." * 

He was triumphantly reelected and was allowed to 
take his seat, but as the Legislature soon adjourned 
he had not much opportunity to get even with his op- 
ponents on the floor of the House. But he had not long 
to wait. The " whirligig of time " brings strange 
changes in politics, and a year later, Mr. McElwee, the 
Democratic leader who had brought about Stevens' ex- 
clusion, was himself expelled from the Legislature, be- 
cause of personally insulting a fellow-member, and he 
did not venture to present himself for reelection. 2 

This contest will serve to show Stevens' partisan 
and uncompromising disposition and that he was ever 
at a keen " fighting edge " whenever the interest of 
his party or his cause demanded it. This fighting par- 
tisanship was obviously in harmony with the spirit of 

1 Niles' Register, 56, p. 216. 
2 Niles 58: p. 96. 



THE BUCKSHOT WAR 39 

the time. It is not easy for us to appreciate the inten- 
sity and bitterness of political feeling in those days. 
The lines were sharply drawn, and one's political op- 
ponents were not graciously spoken of as " our friends, 
the enemy." An enemy in politics was likely to be an 
enemy in personal relations, a tendency that accentu- 
ated the state of strife and of unseemly political con- 
duct. 

Upon Stevens' retirement from the Legislature in 
1 84 1, in spite of the bitter personal strife in which he 
had been engaged during the " Buckshot War," the 
Harrisburg Telegraph paid the following tribute to 
his character and ability as a legislator: " To judge 
of the varied powers of Thaddeus Stevens, it is only 
necessary to review his course during the brief limit 
of the present session. In this review would be in- 
cluded his powerful argument on the right of petition; 
. . . his cogent appeals on the necessity of placing a 
constitutional limit to the state debt; ... his able 
and practical remarks on the vital importance of the 
protective policy to the interests of our nation, showing 
how the flood of commerce poured into England under 
the Navigation Act, how Holland, once the commer- 
cial carrier of the world, was paralyzed under the in- 
fluence of the free trade doctrines, and how the first 
principle of legislation demands that home labor should 
be fostered and protected. Whoever has heard Mr. 
Stevens at this session or at any other, can not hesitate 
to accord to him the most commanding abilities and 
sound constitutional sentiments. Hence it is, stand- 
ing as he does a giant among his pigmy opponents, 
that every shaft of malice and invective is hurled at 



40 THE LIFE OF THADDEUS STEVENS 

him by every puny whipster, who, like the fool of Crete, 
exposes his waxy softness to the fervid glow of his elo- 
quent reply. ... It is not so much our wish to eulo- 
gize Mr. Stevens as to direct the public attention to the 
position he has attained, and so well maintains. We 
want the eyes of the commonwealth directed toward 
him. We want him judged of by his acts, and not 
through ' the false medium of political vituperation.' " * 

1 Calender's Life of Stevens, pp. 51, 52. 



CHAPTER IV 

DEFENDER OF FREE SCHOOLS 

TT was during this legislative career of Stevens in 
■*• Pennsylvania, in the fourth decade of the nine- 
teenth century, that he rendered his great and distin- 
guished service to the cause of free schools. 1 This was 
a preeminent service. It is not only worthy of a spe- 
cial chapter in his life from his biographer, but of an 
historic memorial from the great commonwealth which 
he served so well. 

\ When Stevens came to the arena of public action, 
education was offered to the rich at reasonable rates, 
while only the self-confessed poor were to be schooled 
for nothing. ] Thus a class distinction existed in the 
public schools, and the poor but self-respecting parents 
who could not afford to pay the price named for their 
children's tuition preferred to keep them at home rather 
than to subject themselves to the humiliation of having 
their children put upon the lists as public charges. 

By an act in 1834 the Pennsylvania legislature pro- 
posed to extend to the whole state the free school sys- 
tem that had been locally applied in Philadelphia, recog- 
nizing the great democratic principle of free schools 
for all on equal terms. Stevens was a warm supporter 
of this law, and when it was passed the friends of edu- 
cation and the enlightened advocates of popular gov- 

41 



42 THE LIFE OF THADDEUS STEVENS 

ernment felt that a great advance had been made in the 
support of an intelligent citizenship and free institu- 
tions. The new law would, in time, mean great things 
for Pennsylvania. 

This, of course, meant new taxes, since the schools 
were to be free in the sense of being supported from 
the public treasury. A year later there was reaction, 
and a legislature was elected that was expected to re- 
peal the law. The thrifty and charitable taxpayers of 
Pennsylvania were ready to pay, if necessary, to edu- 
cate pauper children, but the rich and the well-to-do 
who had no children did not propose to support schools 
for the children of others who could afford to pay. 
Others said that those who had no children should not 
be made to pay to educate the children of other peo- 
ple. If the poor man could not afford to school his 
children let him say so, and the charitable taxpayers 
would dole out the necessary funds. 

In the following legislature the State Senate voted 
for summary repeal of the free school law, by passing 
a substitute bill bearing the title, " An act making pro- 
vision for the education of the poor gratis." This 
passed the Senate by a vote of two to one with only 
eight dissenting votes. Thirteen Senators voted for 
it who had voted for the free school act of the pre- 
vious session. It appeared certain that the cause of 
free schools would also be lost in the House. Many 
members who had voted for the cause in the previous 
session had been retired to private life. A committee 
favorable to free schools found a " deplorably large " 
petition containing thirty-two thousand names praying 
for repeal, while only twenty-five hundred were peti- 



DEFENDER OF FREE SCHOOLS 43 

tioning for the retention of the law. The Democratic 
legislative caucus warned the Democratic Governor, a 
friend of free education, against opposing repeal by his 
veto, as that would be sure to defeat him for reelection. 
In this desperate situation one stout obstacle stood 
in the path of repeal. It was Thaddeus Stevens, the 
commoner, the democrat, the friend of the poor, the 
man who believed with his whole soul in popular edu- 
cation and republican government. He stood ready 
to resist the pride and prejudice of a class, the selfish- 
ness of the rich, or the popular passion of the multi- 
tude, and to speak for what he considered a noble and 
righteous cause. He had been returned to the legisla- 
ture by a small majority under instructions to vote for 
the repeal of the law, but instead of obeying his in- 
structions he stood by his convictions and became the 
chief defender of free schools. 1 

r 

" The people might reject him, but so long as he was 

their representative he would follow his convictions of duty. 
He braved the storm when it was at its fiercest pitch and 
boldly moved to strike out all the Senate bill and to substi- 
tute for it a bill strengthening the law which it proposed to 
repeal." - 

On that motion Stevens made one of the noblest 
speeches of his life, a speech, says Mr. McCall, that 
"produced an effect second to no speech ever uttered 
in an American legislative assembly." 3 The speech 
reveals the high and fearless public spirit of the man 
and the liberal democratic principle that governed him 
throughout his long life. 

1 Callender's Stevens, p. 32. 

2 McCall's Stevens, p. 38. 

3 Ibid., p. 38. 



44 THE LIFE OF THADDEUS STEVENS 

He undertook to show that the free school law was 
salutary and useful and that instead of being oppres- 
sive to the people it would " lighten their burdens and 
elevate them in the scale of human intellect." 1 He 
assumed the necessity of education in a free govern- 
ment ; it would be humiliating to be under the necessity 
of proving it. In an elective republic expected to en- 
dure, the electors must have information, to direct 
wisely their legislatures and executives; some agency 
in governing will fall to every freeman. Government, 
then, must see that the means of information be dif- 
fused to every citizen. " This is a sufficient answer to 
those who deem education a pivot and not a public 
duty, — who argue that they are willing to educate their 
own children, but not their neighbors' children." 
While few were so ignorant and shameless as to deny 
the advantages of general education, many were 
alarmed at its burdens. He proceeded to show that 
the free schools would be less burdensome than the 
"present disgraceful plan." With good "male teach- 
ers " to be had at eighteen dollars a month and board 
themselves, and " females " at nine dollars, he was able 
to show a saving of half to the average township of 
two hundred children where two dollars a quarter for 
each child was paid in tuition. Thus on the half mil- 
lion children of the state more than one million dollars 
would be saved. 

" The repealing act is, in my opinion," said Stevens, " of 
a most hateful and degrading character. It is a reenact- 
ment of the pauper law of 1809. It proposes that the 

1 My review of the speech is based on a reprint published at 
Lancaster, Pennsylvania, in 1865. 



DEFENDER OF FREE SCHOOLS 45 

assessors shall take a census and make a record of the poor. 
This shall be revised and a new record made by the county 
commissioners, so that the names of those who have the 
misfortune to be poor men's children shall be forever pre- 
served, as a distinct class, in the archives of the county. 
The teacher, too, is to keep in his school a pauper book and 
register the names and attendance of poor scholars; thus 
pointing out and recording their poverty in the midst of 
their companions. Sir, hereditary distinctions of rank are 
sufficiently odious; but that which is founded on poverty is 
infinitely more so. Such a law should be entitled, ' An act 
for branding and marking the poor, so that they may be 
known from the rich and proud.' Many complain of this 
tax, not so much on account of its amount, as because it is 
for the benefit of others and not themselves. This is a 
mistake ; it is for their own benefit, inasmuch as it perpetu- 
ates the government and insures the due administration of 
the laws under which they live, and by which their lives 
and property are protected. Why do they not urge the same 
objection against all their taxes? The industrious, thrifty, 
rich farmer pays a heavy county tax to support criminal 
courts, build jails, and pay sheriffs and jail keepers, and 
yet probably he never has, and never will have, any direct 
personal use of either. He never gets the worth of his 
money by being tried for a crime before the court, or being 
allowed the privilege of the jail on conviction, or by re- 
ceiving an equivalent from the sheriff or his hangman 
officers ! He cheerfully pays the tax which is necessary to 
support and punish convicts, but loudly complains of that 
which goes to prevent his fellow-being from becoming a 
criminal, and to obviate the necessity of those humiliat- 
ing institutions." 

Stevens' plea was against the establishment of castes 
and grades, and against the cultivation of an aris- 
tocracy of wealth and pride. The tax was said to 
be unjust because the industrious money-making man 



46 THE LIFE OF THADDEUS STEVENS 

would find constant employment for his children, while 
the idle man, finding little employment for his family, 
would constantly send his children to school at the ex- 
pense of others. 

" I know," said he, " that there are some men whose whole 
souls are so completely absorbed in the accumulation of 
wealth, and whose avarice so increases with success, that 
they look upon their very children in no other light than as 
instruments of gain — that they, as well as the ox and the 
ass within their gates, are valuable only in proportion to 
their annual earnings. According to the present system the 
children of such men are reduced almost to an intellectual 
level with their co-laborers of the brute creation. This 
law will be of vast advantage to the offspring of such 
misers. If they are compelled to pay their taxes to sup- 
port schools, their very meanness will induce them to send 
their children to them to get the worth of their money. 
Thus it will extract good out of the very penuriousness of 
the miser." 

He referred to " the languishing and sickly condi- 
tion " of the colleges of Pennsylvania. She, with all 
her fertile riches, had " scarcely one-third as many 
collegiate students as cold barren New England." The 
reason was obvious. She had no free schools. 

" In New England free schools plant the seed and the 
desire of knowledge in every mind, without regard to the 
wealth of the parent or the texture of the pupil's garments. 
When the seed, thus universally sown, happens to fall on 
fertile soil, it springs up and is fostered by a generous public 
until it produces its glorious fruit. . . . Not to mention 
any of the living, it is well known that that architect of an 
immortal name, who ' plucked the lightning from heaven 
and the scepter from tyrants ' was the child of free schools. 
Why should Pennsylvania now repudiate a system which is 



DEFENDER OF FREE SCHOOLS 47 

calculated to elevate her to that rank in the intellectual, 
which by the blessing of Providence she holds in her natu- 
ral world ? . . . Sir, when I reflect how apt hereditary- 
wealth, hereditary influence, and perhaps, as a consequence, 
hereditary pride are to close the avenues and steel the heart 
against the wants and rights of the poor, I am induced to 
thank my Creator for having from early life, bestowed upon 
me the blessing of poverty. Sir, it is a blessing, for if 
there be any human sensation more eternal and divine than 
all others, it is that which feelingly sympathizes with mis- 
fortune." 

Much of the unpopularity of this law Stevens 
charged upon " the vile arts of unprincipled demo- 
gogues." 

" Instead of attempting to remove the honest misappre- 
hensions of the people, they cater to their prejudices, and 
take advantage of them, to gain low, dirty, temporary local 
triumphs. I do not charge this on any particular party. 
Unfortunately almost the only spot on which all parties 
meet in union is this ground of common infamy ! " 

He then proceeded to defend the Democratic Gov- 
ernor, who had been assailed as the father of the law. 
Stevens had opposed Governor Wolf stoutly and with 
all the bitterness common to those early party contests. 
Though the Governor had been guilty, as Stevens 
thought, " of many deep political sins, yet he deserves 
the undying gratitude of the people for the steady un- 
tiring zeal, which he has manifested in favor of com- 
mon schools." These exertions had atoned for many 
of his errors, in Stevens' opinion. 

" I trust that the people of this state will never be 
called upon to choose between a supporter and an opposer 



48 THE LIFE OF THADDEUS STEVENS 

of free schools. But if it should come to that; if that should 
be made the turning point on which we are to cast our suf- 
frages ; if the opponent of education were my most inti- 
mate personal and political friend, and the free school 
candidate my most obnoxious enemy, I should deem it my 
duty as a patriot, at this moment of our intellectual crisis, 
to forget all other considerations, and I should place myself 
unhesitatingly and cordially in the ranks of him whose 
banners stream in light. I would not foster nor natter 
ignorance to gain political victories, which, however they 
might profit individuals, must prove disastrous to our 
country. 

" Those who have failed of reelection on this issue have 
been passed by only for the moment. They had earned the 
approbation of all good and intelligent men more effectually 
by their retirement than they could ever have done by re- 
taining popular favor at the expense of self-humiliation. 
They have fallen between the powers of light and darkness ; 
but they fell, as every Roman mother wished her sons to 
fall, facing the enemy with all their wounds in front. . . . 
Instead of flattering the people and prophesying smooth 
things, it is the duty of faithful legislators to create and 
sustain such laws and institutions as shall teach us our 
wants, foster our cravings after knowledge, and urge us 
forward in the march of intellect." 

Stevens closed this great speech with a stirring plea 
for political courage as the basis of a true popularity. 
Then, as ever after, he stood ready to rebuke the time- 
servers of his party. Some weak-kneed members were 
voting to maintain a temporary popularity in " the ten 
miles square of their ambition." Stevens pleaded for 
a popularity that would outlive its possessor, that would 
" not be buried in the same grave which covers his mor- 
tal remains," and for the fame that comes from uncon- 



DEFENDER OF FREE SCHOOLS 49 

querable courage devoted to the uplift of the poor 
and the welfare of mankind. " In giving this law to 
posterity you act the part of the philanthropist, by be- 
stowing upon the poor as well as the rich the greatest 
earthly boon which they are capable of receiving . . . 
for what earthly glory is there equal in luster and dura- 
tion to that conferred by education? ... I trust," 
said Stevens, in conclusion, " that when we come to act 
on this question we shall take lofty ground, look beyond 
the narrow space which now circumscribes our vision, 
beyond the passing, fleeting point of time on which 
we stand; and so cast our votes that the blessing of 
education shall be conferred on every son of Pennsyl- 
vania — shall be carried home to the poorest child of 
the poorest inhabitant of the meanest hut of your moun- 
tains, so that even he may be prepared to act well his 
part in this land of freemen and lay on earth a broad 
and a solid foundation for that enduring knowledge 
which goes on increasing through increasing eternity." 
To this speech of Stevens has been attributed the 
saving of Pennsylvania's " free school system from 
ignominious defeat." The vote was taken immediately 
after Stevens sat down and the victory so confidently 
anticipated by the friends of repeal was suddenly turned 
into defeat and Stevens' motion was carried by a nearly 
two-thirds majority. " Most remarkable of all, the 
Senate, whose members were listening to the House dis- 
cussion, and who but a short time before had so de- 
cisively voted for repeal, returned to its chamber 
thrilled and delighted with the great effort, converted 
as no Senate had ever been converted before, and im- 



50 THE LIFE OF THADDEUS STEVENS 

mediately concurred with a few unimportant amend- 
ments in the House substitute bill." * 

" Never will the writer of these lines forget," wrote 
Colonel John W. Forney after the death of Stevens in 
1868, " the effect of that surpassing effort pronounced 
by the undaunted opponent of the Democratic party, 
and of the great Masonic brotherhood. 2 All the bar- 
riers of prejudice broke down before it. It reached 
men's hearts like the voice of inspiration. Those who 
were almost ready to take the life of Thaddeus Stevens 
a few weeks before were instantly converted into his 
admirers and friends. During its delivery in the hall 
of the House at Harrisburg, the scene was one of dra- 
matic interest and intensity. Thaddeus Stevens was 
then forty-three years of age and in the prime of life, 
and his classic countenance, noble voice, and cultivated 
style, added to the fact that he was speaking the holiest 
truths, and for the noblest of all human causes, created 
such a feeling among his fellow-members that for once, 
at least, our State Legislature rose above all selfish feel- 
ings and responded to the instincts of a higher na- 
ture." 3 Forney is also authority for the story that 
immediately after Mr. Stevens concluded this great 
speech he received a message from Governor Wolf, 
a Mason, a political opponent of Stevens, but also an 
earnest and sincere friend of education. When Stev- 
ens, in answer to the Governor's message, entered the 
executive chamber, Wolf threw his arms about his 
neck and with tearful eyes and broken voice thanked 

1 McCall's Life of Stevens, p. 40. 

2 Forney himself was a Democrat and a political opponent of 
Stevens in those days. 

3 Philadelpliia Press, August 12, 1868. 



DEFENDER OF FREE SCHOOLS 51 

him for the great service he had rendered to their com- 
mon humanity. Stevens was ever afterward delighted 
to relate this incident, and it was Forney's regret that 
he could not relate it to his readers in Stevens' own 
inimitable and sympathetic manner. 1 A great man had 
grappled with a fierce prejudice of the hour and had 
risked everything for a great object. 2 

Stevens himself styled this effort as the crowning 
utility of his life, and he afterward said that he would 
feel abundantly rewarded for all his efforts in behalf 
of universal education " if a single child, educated by 
the commonwealth, should drop a tear of gratitude on 
his grave." 3 

Stevens' bold and noble attitude on all questions re- 
lating to public education was illustrated repeatedly 
on subsequent occasions. He was ever a valiant sup- 
porter of Pennsylvania College, and although he was 
by nature a strong partisan he never allowed politics 
nor the interest of his party to stand in the way when 
he had an opportunity to render service to the cause 
of public and higher education. He looked to higher 
education by the state as the essence and foundation 
for an enduring democracy. When he was told by a 
party friend, who was anxious that Stevens should 
continue to be the candidate of his party, that his sup- 

1 Ibid. 

2 The Pennsylvania Reporter of April 15, 1835, sa id °f this 
speech of Stevens, — which will be recognized as high praise, com- 
ing as it did from a warm political opponent of the time, " The 
acknowledged talents of this gentleman were never exerted in 
a nobler cause or with greater effect than on this occasion, and 
we feel assured that a more powerful effort of oratory was 
never listened to within the walls of this or any other legislative 
hall." McCarthy's Anti-Masonic Party, p. 466. 

3 Callender, p. 32. 



'§2 THE LIFE OF THADDEUS STEVENS 

port of the state college would injure his political 
party and lose him support at home, Stevens wrote : 
" However I may sacrifice myself, I do not assume the 
right to sacrifice you. But that could only happen upon 
the supposition that I become unpopular and still con- 
tinue to be your candidate. That I will never do. I 
have already resolved that the weight of my name 
shall never again burden your ticket. I will withdraw 
from any active part in your political discussions. And 
if it be necessary to the well-being of our country, dear 
to me as are all my friends and constituents, I will 
withdraw from your county to some place where the 
advocates of Anti-Masonry may be also the advocates 
of knowledge." * 

The second notable speech of Stevens in the cause 
of education was made, March 10, 1838, on a bill " to 
establish a school of Arts in the City of Philadelphia, 
and to endow the colleges and academies of Pennsyl- 
vania." He made a strong plea against that spirit of 
parsimony which had usually governed State Legisla- 
tures in their allowances for higher institutions of 
learning. He wished, above all things, to see Pennsyl- 
vania stand erect in intellectual preeminence, and he 
appealed to her sons, who were in the enjoyment of 
such material prosperity, to stand for a liberal policy 
in higher education that was so calculated to save the 
state from misery and infamy and promote her true 
happiness and glory. A passage will illustrate the 
force of his direct and trenchant eloquence : 

1 Pennsylvania Telegraph, January 25, 1834, cited by McCarthy, 
Anti-Masonic Party, p. 466. 



DEFENDER OF FREE SCHOOLS 53 

" Never was there a grosser or more injurious error than 
to suppose that learning begets pride. Ignorance is the 
parent of pride and disgusting vanity ; he only has censur- 
able pride who has too little knowledge to know that he is 
himself a fool. But he who has long and arduously labored 
up the hill of science and there found himself but standing 
upon the threshold of her temple — who, after a toilsome, 
and perhaps successful examination of the works of nature 
and art, discovers that he has scarcely yet entered upon 
the confines of the inimitable works of an omniscient artist, 
will surely find nothing in his own weak blind insignifi- 
cance to flatter pride or foster vanity. It is the illiterate, 
ignorant, senseless, witless coxcomb that struts and fumes, 
proud perhaps of his ignorance, himself, his baubles, and his 
folly ! " 

Only a year before Stevens' death, at a time when 
he was the unchallenged leader of his party in the na- 
tional councils, after he had for years enjoyed a fame 
that was nation-wide ; while he was still standing as he 
had been for nearly a decade in the forefront of the bat- 
tle in the greatest civic and political struggle of the cen- 
tury and had thus been the target of attack and the 
object of abuse for all the force of a violent opposition, 
— in these closing years of his life, Henry Ward 
Beecher said of him in a sermon in Plymouth church, 
Brooklyn: "When Thaddeus Stevens shall die his 
virtues will be better appreciated and his name will 
be more highly honored than now; for he is one of 
those men who are very inconvenient when alive and 
very valuable when dead. It will be remembered that 
in the dark hours of his country's history when other 
men were afraid to speak, he was not afraid to speak, 
and when other men were afraid to be unpopular he 



54 THE LIFE OF THADDEUS STEVENS 

was not afraid to be unpopular and did not count his 
life dear. But I think that if I were he I would rather 
have written on my gravestone, ' Father of the Com- 
mon Schools of Pennsylvania,' than any other inscrip- 
tion that could be put there. It might justly be written 
there. And from the grave no purer light could 
stream, so far as humanity is concerned, than the in- 
scription to him as his life-work, the founding of a 
system of common schools which has disenthralled that 
state from its ignorance and is bringing it by knowl- 
edge to the stature and power of a gigantic common- 
wealth." x 

This great service of Stevens to the state of his 
adoption has now come to be recognized, and it is 
but just and seemly that an appreciative and grateful 
people in that commonwealth should erect a noble and 
suitable memorial to the greatest man, save one, 2 who 
ever lived within her borders. That memorial fittingly 
represents Stevens as the founder and defender of the 
free school, standing by the temple of learning to 
which with benevolent leading he is directing the chil- 
dren of the humble poor. 

From this noble service for the education of all the 
children of the state, he was soon to be called to an- 
other, the struggle for free soil and for the freedom 
of the slave, to which he devoted all of his remarkable 
talents and almost all the remaining years of his life. 

1 Stevens' Papers, Library of Congress. 

2 Benjamin Franklin. 



CHAPTER V 

THE EARLY FREE-SOILER 

ANOTHER cause than Anti-Masonry elicited 
Stevens' early and deeper interest. This was the 
anti-slavery cause. Hatred of slavery and the disposi- 
tion to oppose it seemed ingrained in his nature. This 
anti-slavery spirit came to him from his antecedents, 
his training, his childhood convictions, — it was the 
innate bent of his mind. It was a part of his de- 
mocracy. He was never converted to the anti-slavery 
cause. That cause was a part of his being, — he could 
not do otherwise than speak and boldly fight for its 
promotion and success. He had no argument with 
himself about it. To oppose slavery and to use all 
means at hand to uproot it seemed to him a course so 
obviously right that argument in the case was uncalled 
for. 

He had settled for his life's work upon the border 
line, as it were, between the Slave and the Free States. 
Here the forces met in conflict that represented the 
antagonistic labor systems, the slave labor system and 
the free. Here opinion was not unevenly divided, 
and one found ample apology in conservative minds 
and easy consciences for the slave system that existed 
just across the border. But Stevens' mind was not 
conservative, and it mattered little to him what the 
custom was or what majority of opinion sustained 

55 



g6 THE LIFE OF THADDEUS STEVENS 

the established order. If, in his judgment, the social 
status violated justice, if it led to oppression, to legal 
impositions and inequalities, he would cry against it 
and spare not. 

The little he had seen of slavery confirmed his op- 
position to it. Godlove S. Orth, of Indiana, is quoted 
as authority for an anti-slavery story in Stevens' early 
life. Orth grew up in Pennsylvania, was educated 
at Gettysburg, and could probably have verified the 
story. The story was that once while going to Balti- 
more to buy books for his law library, Stevens stopped 
for the night at a hotel in Maryland, kept by a man 
with whom he was well acquainted. His attention was 
aroused by a commotion among the servants of the 
hotel. .When he inquired the cause of the trouble a 
woman approached him in tears and implored him to 
do what he could to prevent the contemplated 'sale of 
her husband, who was a slave. On inquiring who and 
where her husband was, she replied, " Why, Massa 
Stevens, he is the ' boy ' who took your horse to the 
stable." Stevens knew the " boy "-and he at once went 
to the owner and remonstrated with him in reference 
to the contemplated sale. He offered the owner one 
hundred and fifty dollars, half the sale price, if he 
would give the slave his liberty. But the owner was 
inexorable and Stevens, knowing the relation that 
existed between the slave and his master, replied, 

" Mr. , are you not ashamed to sell your own flesh 

and blood?" This cutting inquiry brought only the 
response that the master must have money and his slave 
boy was cheap at three hundred dollars. Stevens' 
generous nature responded to the situation. He paid 



THE EARLY FREE-SOILER 57 

three hundred dollars and set the young slave free, the 
sacrifice requiring his return to Gettysburg and the 
postponing of his replenishing his law library until a 
more convenient season. 1 

There was a strong tendency among" Anti-Masons, 
especially among the Pennsylvania Quakers, to become 
anti-slavery men, and they urged in the Pennsylvania 
Legislature, though without success, a bill providing a 
jury trial for fugitive slaves. It was a common rumor 
concerning Stevens in his early struggling years as a 
young lawyer and while he was active in Anti-Masonic 
politics, that no fugitive slave who reached a court 
where he practised was ever taken back into bondage. 
In such a cause he despised a fee and entertained no 
hope of reward. 

In the year that Governor Ritner was elected in 
Pennsylvania, Jonathan Blanchard came into the state 
to speak for the anti-slavery cause, as an agent of the 
American Anti-Slavery Society. Blanchard was an 
abolitionist, but the people were so mad against aboli- 
tionism that he had found no hospitable welcome in the 
old Keystone State, but he had to face, instead, villi- 
fication, contumely, and violence. He reported that 
the ministers of the gospel in private would bid him 
Godspeed but in public on the subject of slavery, they 
were as silent as the tomb. Blanchard was a stern 
Puritan, and during a long life devoted to the Chris- 
tian ministry and to public efforts in moral reforms, he 
exemplified a deep intensity of faith in the Christian 
religion and manifested in his life the spirit of a de- 

1 Congressional Memorial Reminiscent Addresses on Stevens, 
cited by W. U. Hensel in " Stevens as a Lawyer," pp. 7, 8. 



58 ,THE LIFE OF THADDEUS STEVENS 

voted servant and martyr for his cause. As he re- 
flected on the intense pro-slavery character of the 
churches, Blanchard found some reason why Stevens 
as a man of the world looked upon the churches with 
contempt. Stevens despised both bigotry and hypoc- 
risy. But while Blanchard found a culpable silence 
upon the evils of slavery among the churches and its 
ministers he did not find Stevens silent. Blanchard 
said to Stevens : " Mr. Stevens, if you can turn your 
Anti-Masons into abolitionists, you will have a party 
whose politics will not bleach out. The slaveholders 
will not ' possum ' like Free Masons, but will die 
game." Stevens took out his pocketbook, handed 
Blanchard ninety dollars in bank bills and said : 
" Take that and go down into Adams County and 
lecture, and if they Morganize you, we'll make a 
party out of it." Upon Blanchard's reluctance to take 
the money Stevens said, " Never mind, I am twenty- 
one in such things and I know they can not be done 
without money." 

Blanchard went to Gettysburg, as Stevens advised, 
but a mob, encouraged by one Judge McLean, an elder 
in an orthordox church, broke up his meeting. This 
aroused Stevens' anger. He came down from Harris- 
burg, called a meeting in the court-house which " was 
crowded to a jam," and, continues Blanchard in his 
description of the meeting nearly fifty years after, " I 
never listened to such speaking from human lips. 
Every sentence was argument, eloquence, and invec- 
tive, combined and condensed. Giving his words as a 
report of his speech, without his overwhelming, crush- 
ing looks and intonations, seems like pointing to a 



THE EARLY FREE-SOILER 59 

shivered tree as a description of a thunder-storm." 
Elder McLean had said, " We have no slaves here, why- 
come here to disturb our borough with a discussion of 
slavery ? " " Indeed ! " exclaimed Stevens, " so, then, 
human liberty is become a local question, is it ? To be 
discussed only in particular localities? A Universal- 
is! comes here preaching universal salvation and deny- 
ing the faith of the orthodox, and you hear him quietly 
and allow him to pass on. But if a man comes to 
speak for universal liberty, you answer him with vio- 
lence and rotten eggs ! Shame ! Shame ! ! Shame ! ! ! 
What freeman does not feel himself covered all over 
with burning blushes to find himself surrounded with 
such freemen ? " 

Blanchard reports that poor old Judge McLean 
broke through the crowd and fled from the court- 
house and that there were no more pro-slavery mobs in 
Gettysburg. 1 

Whenever any of the Anti-Masons, like Stevens, 
gave expression to their anti-slavery sentiments their 
Democratic opponents charged them with a readiness 
" to mount the abolition hobby." This, they said, was 
now to be the leading policy of those "who formerly 
ranged themselves under the equally prescriptive but 
less bloody banner of Anti-Masonry." 

In the fall of 1836 a convention was elected to re- 
vise the constitution of the state of Pennsylvania. 
Stevens was chosen as a delegate from Adams County. 
The convention was a partisan body; the majority of 
its members were Democrats, and it may safely be 
concluded that Stevens did nothing to allay its 

1 Reminiscences, Christian Cynosure, April 5, 1883. 



6o THE LIFE OF THADDEUS STEVENS 

partisan spirit. The political opponents of Stevens 
sought to break him down and destroy his influence 
before the work of the convention began. They 
wished to identify him with abolitionism and to make 
use of the hot sentiment of the people against these 
meddlesome and pestiferous agitators who were 
thought to be threatening the very foundations of the 
Union. These Democratic enemies of Stevens, led by 
one McGriffin, issued a call for a " convention of the 
friends of the integrity of the Union," and they 
planned to have their convention meet just the day 
before the assembly of the Constitutional Convention. 
These " friends of the integrity of the Union " wished 
to rebuke the abolitionists and to do what they could 
to restrain the anti-slavery agitation. The idea, with 
a little clever spontaneous cultivation from a few self- 
seeking leaders, seemed to be overwhelmingly popular. 
Over seven hundred delegates were elected to the 
" Union," or Anti-Abolition, Convention. Not many 
seemed ready to raise their voices on behalf of the 
slave. A constable in Chambersburg had lately re- 
ceived one thousand dollars for catching and return- 
ing fugitive slaves. A military major had lately 
seized and sold a free woman and five children out of 
the same county, pretending that they were slaves, and 
with the thirty or more pieces of silver that he had 
received in reward for his deed he had bought his 
uniform. 

It was such mercenary " Union " patriots who were 
arousing mobs of irresponsible men to break up the 
meetings of the zealous abolitionists in order to close 
their mouths. At this juncture Jonathan Blanchard, 



THE EARLY FREE-SOILER 61 

fighting as it were with his back to the wall in a 
desperate effort to influence public sentiment, wrote to 
Stevens, who was at his home in Gettysburg, to have 
Charles B. Penrose, of Carlisle, appointed to the " In- 
tegrity-of-the-Union " Convention. Blanchard's idea 
was to get some one into the convention who would 
force that body to commit itself for or against slavery. 
"If they oppose slavery the South will oppose them. 
If they go for slavery we can lead the people who 
really hate slavery, to oppose them." He wished some 
brave man to step in to force the fight into the open 
and to get a direct issue on the merits of slavery. 
What was Blanchard's astonishment and delight when 
he learned that Stevens had secured his own appoint- 
ment to the Union Convention instead of sending 
Penrose. Doctor Blanchard's description of Stevens 
in that convention is worthy of preservation. 

" The day came. I managed to squeeze into the 
densely packed old court-house in Harrisburg. I 
stood behind a pillar, and sketched, and afterward 
wrote out a report of that remarkable melee. The re- 
port was published and I was told that Mr. Dunlap 
and others at the state-house next day were so over- 
whelmed with Stevens' truth, patriotism, justice and 
eloquence, blended with wit, satire and sarcasm, that 
reading the report they rolled on the carpet and shook 
their sides with laughter. . . . Stevens had come in 
late and his coming was greeted by the dense crowd 
with looks of fear, hatred, and wrath. An old Whig, 
Judge Beard, was in the chair. A preacher from Pitts- 
burgh rose and on some motion said : ' Born, sir, in 
Tennessee, raised in Kentuckv, I am an exile from 



62 THE LIFE OF THADDEUS STEVENS 

my native state on account of slavery; yet I have come 
to this convention ready to peril my all in the cause 
of our national Union.' Stevens, as soon as the man 
had done, sprang to his feet. In an instant every spit- 
box was kicked and rattled. Hundreds hissed and 
the mouths that did not hiss groaned and howled. It 
was bedlam uncapped. For a moment I was stunned, 
till I looked at Mr. Stevens. He turned with calm 
haughtiness around and looked that storm of howls 
and hisses in the face! Then, turning with an em- 
phasis utterly indescribable above the uproar, he said : 
' Mr. President ; we are not slaves here in Pennsyl- 
vania! And' (with slow and solemn emphasis) 'if 
the attempt is made to make us such there are some of 
us in this court-house who will make resistance enough 
to let Pennsylvanians outside know the doom that 
awaits them ! ' The house was now so still that you 
could hear the clock tick. He then turned toward the 
preacher and imitating his drawl, said : 

" ' Sir, I deeply sympathize with my respected friend 
over the way in all that he has done and suffered in 
the cause of our glorious Union which we have now 
first met to promote! Indeed, sir, so moved am I at 
beholding him, an exile from his native state, driven 
out by slavery, that I am ready to join this convention 
in a vote of reprobation of that foul institution which 
drives white men from their homes to wander as exiles 
in distant states.' 

" There was an uproar of applause, some of it com- 
ing from men who had hissed him but a few moments 
before. Stevens continued to expose the hypocritical 
patriotism of the preacher, who had been circulating a 



THE EARLY FREE-SOILER 63 

subscription paper and soliciting funds. Imitating the 
preacher's voice and manner, with mock commisera- 
tion for his suffering, with keen satire on the pro- 
slavery leaders of the crowd who, he assumed, were 
all anti-slavery as he was, Stevens by his drollery, wit 
and shafts of truth and fearless justice, finally won 
entire control of the convention. When the resolu- 
tions were offered Stevens would move to amend by 
adding words in favor of liberty from the Pennsyl- 
vania Constitution and Bill of Rights, which the con- 
vention dared not vote down, with the result that the 
proceedings were turned into a farce and broke up 
in laughter. Stevens had shown himself such a force 
as was not to be answered nor suppressed." * 

Another account relates that Stevens in one of the 
discussions so completely demonstrated the absurdity 
of a proposed resolution that a spineless doughface 
member declared that, while he " abhorred abolition- 
ism, he could never endorse such a doctrine." There- 
upon a clergyman — it may have been the same pious 
martyr from Pittsburgh — aroused by the headway 
Stevens was obviously making in the convention, 
took the floor and accused Stevens of " coming to 
the convention while holding to the abominable doc- 
trines of the abolitionists, to sit in sheep's clothing 
among the friends of the Union, while in his heart he 
is wishing to throw his firebrands to consume it." 
Stevens immediately rebuked the clergyman for in- 
dulging in personalities. " I meant no one in par- 
ticular," replied the clergyman. " Indeed," said 

1 " Reminiscences on Stevens," by Jonathan Blanchard in the 
Christian Cynosure, April 5, 1883. 



64 THE LIFE OF THADDEUS STEVENS 

Stevens, " I certainly understood the gentleman to 
insinuate that my friend yonder," — the colleague 
whom he had just forced to disclaim the pro-slavery 
resolution, and whose hair was a fiery red, — " that my 
friend yonder looked very much like a firebrand ! " x 

While Stevens was possessed with a consuming ha- 
tred of the slave system, yet at no time throughout his 
life did he propose to attack it by any process that 
was beyond the Constitution and the laws. During 
his legislative career in Pennsylvania in the winter of 
1836-7 he offered a resolution relating to slavery, to 
the effect that " slaveholding states alone have the 
right to regulate and control domestic slavery within 
their limits," but that " Congress possesses the consti- 
tutional power, and it is expedient, to abolish slavery 
and the slave trade within the District of Columbia." 
This indicates that he stood from the beginning on 
the Free-soil and Republican ground in reference to 
the great sectional question with which he had so much 
to do in his later life. 

Stevens served in the Constitutional Convention with 
some of the ablest men of Pennsylvania, including John 
Sargent, James C. Biddle, Thomas Earle, Joseph H. 
Hopkinson and Charles J. Ingersoll, all of Philadelphia, 
and with James Merrill, of Union County, " the in- 
defatigable and laborious searcher after facts," who 
had preceded Stevens as a teacher in York County. 
Stevens bore his full share of the convention's burdens 
and debates. The most notable aspect of his record 
was his protest in the convention, which he urged with 
all his might, against the fatal folly of inserting the 

1 McCall, p. 50. 



THE EARLY FREE-SOILER 65 

word white into the clause of the Constitution, defining 
the qualifications for voters. Stevens felt that it was 
a mean and unjustifiable discrimination. It violated 
his innate instinct in favor of democratic equality, and 
when it was done he lost interest in the proceedings, 
and was so offended and disgusted by the act that 
he refused to attach his name to the Constitution. He 
believed that the unjust discrimination had been per- 
petrated through the influence of slaveholders and 
doughfaces " who had been excited by the abolition 
agitation. In the heated and protracted debate on the 
subject Stevens' invective came into play, and then, 
as ever after, he refused to yield an iota in the demo- 
cratic cause to which he had dedicated his life, — the 
cause of the equal rights of all before the law, regard- 
less of race, color, religion, or nationality. 

Stevens was active in promoting the nomination and 
election of Harrison to the presidency in 1840. He 
was opposed to Clay, and it is said that Clay's open 
opposition to Stevens' appointment to the Harrison 
cabinet led to the disappointment of Stevens, who had 
been promised the position of postmaster-general. 1 

1 Harris, Biographical History of Lancaster County, p. 582, 
cited by McCall, p. 57, and Harris' Political Conflict, p. 91. 

Colonel A. K. McClure is sponsor for a Stevens story touch- 
ing his agency in the nomination of Harrison by the Whigs in 
1840. The Virginia delegation was hesitating between Harrison 
and Scott. Stevens, the leader of the Pennsylvania delegation, 
turned the Virginians from Scott to Harrison by a questionable 
political trick. Scott had written a letter to Francis Granger, of 
New York, seeking to conciliate the anti-slavery sentiment of 
that state. It was a private letter, but Granger gave it to 
Stevens. Stevens called at the headquarters of the Virginia 
delegation and inadvertently (?) dropped the letter to the floor, 
and its contents became known to the Virginians. They turned 
from Scott to Harrison. Either could have been elected. 
" My authority for this," says McClure, " is Stevens himself. He 



'66 THE LIFE OF THADDEUS STEVENS 

In 1 84 1, after his defeat in the Buckshot War, Stev- 
ens was once more elected to the Pennsylvania Legis- 
lature. At this session he spoke vigorously in favor 
of the rights of petition, in favor of limiting the state 
debt and in opposition to those who, as he thought, 
were recklessly attacking sound banking institutions 
and systems of banking. He was Anti-Jackson and 
Anti-Democratic and whatever the advocates of the 
Jackson party favored he would be likely to antagonize. 

Stevens removed from Gettysburg to Lancaster in 
1842. He now retired from politics for a period of 
eight years, a retirement made necessary because of 
the entangled condition of his private affairs, and be- 
cause he did not stand in favor with the dominant 
and more conservative faction of the Whig party in 
Lancaster county. He wrote to a friend who urged 
him to embark actively into the anti-slavery cause for 
the sake of his country and humanity, that he would 
do so but for the failure of his partner whom he had 
trusted with the entire charge of his business. " I 
have failed for ninety thousand dollars," he wrote, 
and " I know of no way out of such things but to pay 
the uttermost farthing. I have moved up to this rich 
country to earn the means to pay my honest debts." * 

disliked Scott for his vanity, but his strong reason for support- 
ing Harrison was a letter from Harrison assuring Stevens of a 
place in his cabinet. After the election Stevens made no effort 
for the place, feeling secure; while Josiah Randall (father of 
Samuel J. Randall) and Charles B. Penrose (grandfather of 
Boise B. Penrose) entered aggressively as candidates. Stevens 
was dumfounded when he saw that his name was omitted from 
the cabinet list. He never forgave Webster, who, as Stevens 
believed to the day of his death, had prevented his appointment." 
Our Presidents and How He Make Them, p. 68. 

1 Correspondence with Jonathan Blanchard. Alexander Hood 
is authority for the statement that Stevens' debts in 1843 
amounted to $217,000. History of Lancaster County. 



THE EARLY FREE-SOILER 67 

He soon paid the last dollar of this enormous debt, 
which he was able to do because of a growing and 
lucrative practise. Stevens was competent in busi- 
ness, though he was open-hearted and open-handed 
with his means. 

Though the Lancaster bar was a very able one and 
the old lawyers were somewhat jealous of the new- 
comer, Stevens' practise grew so rapidly that he soon 
took a front rank among his colleagues, with a practise 
that brought him an income of from twelve thousand 
to fifteen thousand dollars a year. Within six months 
after his arrival no member of that able bar dared to 
dispute Stevens' " intellectual and legal kingship." * 
He appeared in most of the cases coming to the Su- 
preme Court from Lancaster County. When, after a 
few years, his debts had been reduced to thirty thou- 
sand dollars, he began to look forward again to activity 
in politics, for which he had a strong liking and a 
natural bent. 

During this period of his retirement in 1842, 
Stevens received a letter from Salmon P. Chase, writ- 
ten from Cincinnati, by which Chase sought to in- 
terest Stevens in the cause of the Liberty party. The 
two men were strangers to each other, but Chase had 
noticed Stevens' career and he wrote to him frankly 
on behalf of a cause in which both men felt a deep 
interest. Chase enclosed an " address " of the Liberty 
party published by a convention at Columbus, Ohio, 
in December, 1841. This address, obviously written 
by Chase, drew a distinction between abolitionism 
and the Liberty party. The one sought to abolish 

1 Harris, Political Conflict, p. 87. 



68 THE LIFE OF THADDEUS STEVENS 

slavery everywhere, the means being only of a moral 
nature, as by argument, reason, and persuasion. The 
Liberty party, on the other hand, sought only to 
abolish slavery wherever it exists within reach of the 
constitutional action of Congress, to restrict slavery 
within the Slave States, and to deliver the government 
from the control of the slave power. Chase made a 
strong plea for freedom of speech and of the press; 
he sought to draw Stevens' attention to this cause and 
he invited an expression of his views. " What I hear 
of your character," wrote Chase, " leads me to think 
you will take it in good part. Can not you take ground 
with us? Can not you bring the old Anti-Masonic 
party of Pennsylvania on to the Liberty platform? 
Could Seward, of New York, or Judge McLean, of 
Ohio, be obtained to lead, or shall we retain Birney? " 
Stevens' former friend, Jonathan Blanchard, was 
then a Presbyterian minister in Cincinnati. He also 
wrote to Stevens for the Liberty cause. He spoke 
of Samuel Lewis — " a lawyer, a Methodist preacher 
and an honest man, three extremes which rarely meet 
in the composition of man " — and of Doctor Aydelotte, 
"the highly esteemed President of Woodward Col- 
lege," as being interested with Chase in a proposed 
anti-slavery meeting in Cincinnati, and if the meeting 
was held Blanchard was anxious to have Stevens pres- 
ent. " You know," he wrote, " that I am very anxious 
to have you become a Christian for the salvation of 
your own soul. Next to this I am anxious to have 
you employ your extraordinary powers with which 
God has endowed you for the furtherance of right- 
eousness and justice in this wretched earth. You are 



THE EARLY FREE-SOILER 69 

utterly unfit to make speeches on the common miser- 
able topics of political strife. Another thing I want 
is that you should help Chase to displace the name of 
Birney and substitute that of Seward or J. Q. Adams 
as the anti-slavery candidate for President, and in 
such a way as to prevent a break between eastern and 
western abolitionists. ... I meddle but little with 
politics, seeking only to vote as near right as I can. 
But I remember you with gratitude. I have an almost 
superstitious belief in your talents and I do not think 
you understand their extent." 1 

Stevens delayed his answer to these urgent letters, 
being undetermined what answer to give. He then 
wrote to Blanchard : 2 "I need not say how entirely 
my views and wishes accord with your own in the 
object you have in view. The only question is as to the 
means most likely to accomplish it. I have believed 
that could best be done by declining as yet to organize 
a distinct political party. I am aware how often we 
have been cheated by the men of other parties, — how 
few of them prove faithful after being elected. And 
yet I think the cause of liberty has gained and is gain- 
ing more friends by the tyranny of slaveholders and 
their abetters than could have been done in the same 
time by the most strenuous associated party effort by 
us. 

" In thinking of the next President, I know that be- 
fore Harrison's nomination Gerrit Smith was in favor 
of General Scott and I suppose he would not have 
been so without good reason. I have corresponded 

1 Letters and Papers of Stevens, April 9, 1842. 

2 Under date of May 24, 1842. 



yo THE LIFE OF THADDEUS STEVENS 

with the general lately and find him in favor of the 
right of petition in its largest sense and a firm and fear- 
less condemner of the proceedings against Mr. Gid- 
dings. 1 This is a good deal in these times, enough to 
make slaveholders and their adherents hate him. Be- 
lieving that he can be elected and will not deceive us, 
and will do more for our cause elected than can be 
done by suffering defeat with a still more thorough 
anti-slavery man, I have come to the conclusion to sup- 
port him for the presidency." 

Stevens then expressed his admiration for the ad- 
dress of the Liberty Convention and for its author, 
who, as he said, " possesses a cool head and deep knowl- 
edge of mankind as well as a right heart." 

The Liberty address, which we would now call 
a platform, justified the formation of a new party be- 
cause of the ascendancy of slaveholding influence in 
all departments of the national government. There 
was no manly and resolute resistance to slaveholding 
pretensions; no firm and successful vindication of the 
claims of free labor; no bold and energetic assertion of 
the great principles of constitutional liberty nor can 
any be expected from the two old parties. The right 
of petition is denied at the violent dictation of slavery. 
The address denounced the slaveholders as a " priv- 
ileged order," whose representatives have always 
acted in solid phalanx whenever the interests of slave 
labor were in question, and they made the protection 
and advancement of those interests the price of their 
political influence in the scales of parties. This power 

1 This refers to the expulsion of Giddings from the House of 
Representatives in 1842, on account of the Creole Resolutions. 



THE EARLY FREE-SOILER 71 

controlled the country, upholding slavery in the Dis- 
trict of Columbia and territories, creating new slave 
states and it has again and again prostrated free labor 
in the dust. " It has interfered with the domestic 
legislation of the Free States, stifled freedom of speech 
and debate, set at naught the right of petition, promoted 
mob violence within our own border by sending its 
enemies among us to delude and inflame the ignorant 
and the vile, and in a neighboring state has stained the 
soil with blood, — the blood of an upright citizen ob- 
noxious only as a fearless asserter of human rights." 1 

In conclusion, the address demanded the absolute 
and unqualified divorce of the government from 
slavery and it " gave to the breeze the banner of Con- 
stitutional Liberty on whose folds were inscribed, 
Liberty, Equal Rights, Protection to Free Labor, Gen- 
eral Education and Public Economy ! " 

This voiced fully and forcibly Stevens' sentiments 
on slavery and the times. He was, however, an astute 
politician who was playing the game within the Whig 
party for the control of that organization. He was 
looking not only to agitation and education, but to 
success in carrying elections. His dislike of Clay was 
prompted partly by his distrust of that great leader on 
the slavery question and partly by Clay's Masonic at- 
tachments. He anticipated Clay's nomination in 1844, 
and while he did not break with the Whig party and 
while he nominally supported its candidate, he was 
known not to be disappointed greatly in Clay's defeat. 
Publicly he supported Clay, but he was accused of 
secretly conniving at his defeat by privately advising 

1 Referring to the death of Lovejoy in Illinois. 



-J2 THE LIFE OF THADDEUS STEVENS 

and encouraging anti-slavery Whigs to go off to Birney 
or to abstain from voting. Stevens had written to 
General Scott in February, 1842 : " The Clay men are 
taking courage again. They soon forget their de- 
feats. It is best to let them have undisturbed sway 
until after the next election so that they can not deny 
that that is a test of their power. They, of course, 
will be annihilated everywhere, but whether that will 
teach them wisdom remains to be seen. Our true 
course seems to me to be to remain on the turf and 
await events." 1 

After the election of 1844, Stevens gave his atten- 
tion, as far as he was in politics, to leading his wing 
of the Whig party into dominance and control in 
Lancaster County. He remained " on the turf " and in 
the running. He maintained his party regularity, and 
after another four years had rolled round, his leader- 
ship was recognized in his new location and he stepped 
forth again into public life, this time as a Whig candi- 
date for Congress. 

1 Stevens' Papers, Library of Congress, February 15, 1842. 



CHAPTER VI 

IN" CONGRESS BEFORE THE WAR; ANTI-SLAVERY 
PHILIPPICS 

TN 1848 Stevens received the Whig nomination for 
•*■ Congress in the Lancaster district. He had 
triumphed over the " machine " of his party, and 
was elected by the voters of the district by more than 
four thousand majority over his Democratic opponent. 
The Thirty-first Congress of which he became a 
member was a notable one in American history. It 
met at a time when the country was in the throes of a 
renewed agitation on the slavery question, an agitation 
that threatened the continuance of the Union. Texas 
had been annexed in spite of anti-slavery opposition. 
The Mexican War had followed and had just been 
brought to a successful conclusion. As one of the re- 
sults of that war, the United States had received from 
Mexico a large accession of new territory. California 
had been taken possession of by right of conquest dur- 
ing the war, and in the treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, 
closing the war, Mexico acknowledged the south- 
western boundary that Texas had claimed, and ceded 
to the United States, in addition to California, large 
areas in the Southwest, including New Mexico and 
Arizona, Nevada, Utah, and parts of Colorado and 
Wyoming. 

73 



74 THE LIFE OF THADDEUS STEVENS 

The question immediately arose, what shall be the 
status of this new territory as to slavery? Shall 
slavery be permitted there ? Or, shall it be excluded 
by congressional power ? 

This question which arrayed the two sections of the 
country against each other and became the political 
issue of the hour, was associated with a number of 
other sore and exciting questions relating to slavery. 
A summary of all these controverted questions that 
were pending before Congress and the country at the 
opening of the Thirty-first Congress in December, 
1849, is essential to an understanding of the political 
situation. 

The first and most important of all w T as the ques- 
tion of slavery in the new territories, to which we 
have referred. Shall slave property be recognized and 
permitted in the Mexican cessions under national law 
or shall it be prohibited? The Mexican War had 
hardly begun when, in anticipation that Mexico would 
be forced to cede territory to the United States, an ap- 
propriation bill was offered granting money to the 
President to provide for the negotiation, with a view 
to the purchase of territory. To this " three million 
bill," David Wilmot, a Democratic Representative of 
Pennsylvania, moved his celebrated " Wilmot 
Proviso," to the effect that " neither slavery nor in- 
voluntary servitude, except in punishment of crime 
whereof the party shall have been duly convicted," shall 
ever exist in any part of any Mexican territory that 
might be obtained. It was this proposition particularly 
that threw Congress and the country into an excit- 
ing agitation. The " Proviso " did not pass with the 



ANTI-SLAVERY PHILIPPICS 75 

original appropriation bill in connection with which it 
was proposed; but the proposal remained before the 
country and there was a grim anti-slavery determina- 
tion in the North to apply the principle of the Wilmot 
Proviso to the Mexican cessions, and exclude slavery 
from the new possessions. 

This proposition was very offensive to the South. 
The Mexican War had been especially promoted and 
supported by the people of that section. If, now, the 
fruits of the war were to be denied them and their 
" peculiar institution " were to be denied legitimate 
recognition and protection in the new possessions 
which had come to the United States by the expendi- 
ture of Southern blood and treasure, there would be 
reason enough, according to Southern opinion, for a 
dissolution of the Union. The Virginia Legislature 
asserted that the passage of the Wilmot Proviso 
would be an " outrage," and that the Southern States 
should never submit to it; such a denial to the South 
of " equal rights in the territories " would be in itself 
equivalent to a dissolution of the Union. Calhoun and 
Rhett, of South Carolina, Berrien, Toombs, and Steph- 
ens, of Georgia, and other able statesmen of the South, 
defended the rights of the Southern people to carry 
their slave property into the new territory and have it 
protected there by national power, and they gave notice, 
substantially, that if this equal protection to their slave 
property were denied, the Union would be of no further 
use to them. 

On the other hand, the public sentiment of the North 
was just as decidedly opposed to the further extension 
of slavery; and while both of the leading political par- 



y6 THE LIFE OF THADDEUS STEVENS 

ties refused to insert the principle of the Wilmot Pro- 
viso in their campaign platforms in 1848 for fear of 
losing their Southern supporters, the rank and file of 
both the Whigs and the Democrats in the Northern 
States were stoutly opposed to the extension of slavery. 
So positive was this sentiment that when the parties 
refused to come out openly for the policy of the Wil- 
mot Proviso, the more radical and pronounced anti- 
slavery men in both parties came out of their parties 
and united in the new Free-soil party whose pri- 
mary purpose was to exclude slavery from the terri- 
tories. This new party declared for " free soil for a 
free people " and asserted that, with " free men, free 
labor, free press and free soil " inscribed upon its 
banners it would fight on and fight ever until a triumph- 
ant victory had crowned its efforts. This party stood 
for uncompromising opposition to slave extension. It 
polled 292,000 votes for President in 1848, for Martin 
Van Buren, a Democratic leader of former days, and 
this vote represented also the sentiment of many voters 
who, for reasons of expendiency and party loyalty, 
refused to come out of their old parties. Thousands 
of Democrats and Whigs who refused to leave their 
parties, believed in the fundamental principle of the 
new party — the principle of the Wilmot Proviso. 
They continued to hope that the object in view could 
be obtained without the sacrifice of their party interests 
and ties. 

When Congress met in December, 1849, tne question 
as to whether the Wilmot Proviso should be applied 
to the Mexican cessions was still pending. ' The Free- 
soilers had elected a handful of Congressmen, thir- 



ANTI-SLAVERY PHILIPPICS 77 

teen in number, who would be governed in their public 
conduct primarily with reference to the slavery issue 
alone, and it was evident that a sharp contest was 
pending. 

Another prominent question was whether California 
should be admitted as a Free State. Gold was dis- 
covered in California in January, 1848, a few days 
before the peace treaty was made with Mexico. Im- 
migrants from the Eastern States and from all parts of 
the world began to flow into California, across the 
plains, by way of the isthmus, around the Horn. These 
" forty-niners " were mostly Americans, but there 
were among them all sorts and conditions of men. 
Vigilance committees and lynch law were at first their 
only means of government. But within a year and a 
half, a time that seems almost incredible for such a 
work, a state of more than 100,000 people had been 
organized in this new land. By the fall of 1849 a 
Constitutional Convention had been held under the 
direction of the Military Governor; a state constitution 
was adopted by which slavery was excluded from the 
state by an almost unanimous vote of the convention, 
and when Congress met in December, 1849, California 
presented herself at the portals of the Union asking 
admission as a Free State. 

The slaveholders of the South saw that the admis- 
sion of California would break the " balance of 
power " in the Senate, between the Slave States and the 
Free. Iowa had offset Texas and Wisconsin had off- 
set Florida. There was no other slave state ready 
to come in to offset California, and there was no 
prospect of any. The Southern leaders therefore ob- 



78 THE LIFE OF THADDEUS STEVENS 

jected to the admission of California. They said she 
was not ready for statehood, that her organization had 
been irregular and disorderly and without the au- 
thorization of Congress ; that she should be remanded 
to the territorial status and come in when ready by 
the usual " enabling act " of Congress. On the other 
hand, the anti-slavery men insisted that California 
should be immediately admitted with her free-state con- 
stitution. 

Another aspect of the slavery question that had been 
before Congress for a number of years, through the 
persistent and pestiferous petitions and activities of 
the abolitionists of the North, was that of abolishing 
slavery in the District of Columbia. Petitions to bring 
this about continued to come to Congress. The anti- 
slavery men of the North who wished to relieve them- 
selves of all responsibility for Southern slavery, felt 
that as long as slavery existed at the national capital 
they were partly responsible for it. They wished slav- 
ery abolished, or prevented, wherever the national au- 
thority extended or wherever it might be held that 
the national authority was responsible for it. That 
authority was supreme in the District of Columbia, as 
well as in the territories, and the anti-slavery agitators 
were determined that the detestable system of slavery 
should no longer continue under the dome of the na- 
tional capital. 

On the other hand, Southern leaders contended that 
to abolish slavery in the District of Columbia would 
be a violation of good faith toward the people of 
Maryland and Virginia, who had ceded this territory 
to the federal government as slave territory; that 



ANTI-SLAVERY PHILIPPICS 79 

abolition should not be permitted in the District so 
long as slavery existed in Maryland and Virginia, and 
not at all except by the consent of the people of the 
District and with due compensation for the eman- 
cipated slaves. This was a sore question which had 
been for nearly twenty years a cause of dispute and 
alienation between the Southern defenders of slavery 
and the Northern abolitionists, and one rash Souther- 
ner went so far as to say in Congress that if slavery 
were abolished in the District of Columbia, Maryland 
should reassert her jurisdiction over that territory and 
enforce her slave code in Washington. This question 
was pending when the Thirty-first Congress met. 

Further, the Southern slaveholders were insisting 
upon a more stringent fugitive slave law. The public 
sentiment of the North against slavery, the " Personal 
Liberty Bills " in many of the states, the decision of 
the Supreme Court in the case of Prigg vs. Pennsyl- 
vania, by which it was decided that state officers and 
agencies could not be required for use in enforcing the 
Fugitive Slave Act of 1793, — these influences made it 
very difficult for the Southerners to recover their run- 
away slaves in the Northern States. They demanded 
that their right to the recovery of this property, so 
clearly recognized in the Constitution, should be made 
secure by the exercise of national authority, and they 
came to the Thirty-first Congress with an earnest and 
determined demand that the Northern States should 
be required to live up to their constitutional compact 
obligations in this regard. 

This demand, as might be expected, met resistance 
among representatives of strong anti-slavery constitu- 



80 THE LIFE OF THADDEUS STEVENS 

encies. They asserted it to be their duty to protect 
their free colored inhabitants from being kidnaped 
and carried into slavery, and that the freedom and 
safety of a single one of these free negroes was a more 
important matter than the escape of many fugitives 
from bondage. The " slave catcher " was hateful to 
Northern communities, and while the politicians and 
thousands of others in the North who were indifferent 
to the cause of the slave were willing that the obligation 
to return the slave should be lived up to, there were yet 
thousands of anti-slavery men who were determined 
that, law or no law, the fugitive should not be re- 
turned. This was a constant source of irritation and 
quarrel. 

Further, Northern men were insisting, as a means 
of crippling slavery, that the interstate slave trade 
should be prohibited, — which, of course, would be an 
offense to the South ; while Southern men were stand- 
ing up for the full recognition of the extensive claims 
of Texas to the Rio Grande as her southwestern boun- 
dary, a claim that was denounced as extravagant and 
absurd even by some men from the Slave States, and 
which, if allowed, would materially extend slave juris- 
diction; while the more ardent friends of Texas were 
threatening to " light the fires of civil war from the 
Potomac to the Rio Grande " if the claim were not 
allowed. 

Never before had Congress met in such trying times. 
These questions had all been hotly discussed by the 
press and on the hustings in both sections of the 
Union. A temper had been aroused on both sides of 
the great slavery controversy that was disposed to per- 



ANTI-SLAVERY PHILIPPICS 81 

mit of no further yielding. Moderate men believed 
that unless this contentious and antagonistic spirit 
could be curbed and the spirit of conciliation and com- 
promise be substituted for it, the Union was in serious 
danger. If the preservation of the American Union 
was to be regarded as the paramount consideration of 
the hour and as the most precious object of American 
statesmanship, then a public character like that of 
Henry Clay, and not like that of Thaddeus Stevens, 
was the kind of a man the times called for. Clay 
was the man who was needed to adjust matters, to fix 
up difficulties, to put restraints upon men's purposes 
and desires for the sake of peace. 

The opening days of the Thirty-first Congress illus- 
trate the sharp divisions between the sections. The 
Congress was organized amid passion and strife, after 
a sharp and protracted struggle over the election of a 
Speaker, and for the first time in the history of Con- 
gress a Speaker was elected by only a plurality of votes. 
There were nine Free-soil members of the House 
who w r ould give their votes to neither party, unless 
pledges were made favorable to the Free-soil cause, 
and there were several other members who, it seems, 
voted independently of their party caucus nominations. 
The more positive anti-slavery men were dissatisfied 
with the course of Robert C. .Wmthrop, the Whig 
Speaker of the former House, and they now stoutly 
refused to vote for his reelection; nor would they 
vote for the Democratic candidate, Mr. Flowell Cobb, 
of Georgia. The consequence was, neither party could 
muster a majority of the House. The struggle was 
over the committees. The Free-soilers were anxious 



82 THE LIFE OF THADDEUS STEVENS 

that the committees on the territories, the judiciary, 
and the District of Columbia, should be made up in a 
way that would be satisfactory to them, and they 
would vote for no one for Speaker who would not give 
satisfactory pledges on that score. They wished their 
cause to have a fair and open hearing and that all 
projects in opposition to slavery should not be 
smothered in committee, but that the public sentiment 
of the North might have a chance to be heard on " the 
great question that now agitated the country." l 

On one ballot five of these Free-soilers voted for 
William J. Brown, a Democratic member from Indiana, 
who had been put forward by the Democrats after re- 
peated trials for Cobb, in the hope of uniting enough 
votes to elect. Brown came within two votes of be- 
ing elected, Wilmot and other Free-soilers aiding him, 
because Brown had written to Wilmot saying that he 
(Brown) being a representative of a Free State had 
" always been opposed to the extension of slavery," 
and that he would " constitute the committees on the 
District of Columbia, the territories, and the judiciary 
in such a manner as shall be satisfactory to yourself 
and friends." When it was noticed that Free-soilers 
were voting for the Democratic candidate, suspicion 
was aroused and when the fact was brought out that 
Brown had made pledges to one of the Free-soil lead- 
ers, he was, as might be expected, abandoned and de- 
nounced by the Southern Democrats. 

While Wilmot was explaining the uncovered " bar- 
gain " between Brown and the Free-soilers, Stevens 
sought to bring out by a question whether or not Wil- 

1 Globe, December 12, 1849, p. 21. 



ANTI-SLAVERY PHILIPPICS 83 

mot had reason to believe, from Brown's pledges, that 
the committees would be composed of members who 
were in favor of free soil. Wilmot replied that he had 
reason to believe that " the majority of the committees 
would be composed of fair Northern men," at which 
there was " great laughter over the hall " and applause 
in some parts with several voices inquiring, " Where 
are the three aces ? " Wilmot explained that by " fair 
Northern men " he meant " men who would not give 
their aid to stifle the expression of the sentiments of 
the people of the North," — namely, that slavery should 
go no further, which Wilmot believed to be the senti- 
ment of two-thirds of the Northern people. Stevens, 
by another question to Wilmot, called the attention of 
the House and country to the fact that his Free-soil cor- 
respondence with Brown merely showed the same state 
of thing's as that which took place two years before 
between certain gentlemen and Mr. Winthrop previous 
to Winthrop 1 s election as Speaker of the preceding 
Congress. Pledges had appeared to be necessary then, 
and the committees had been subsequently organized 
in a way calculated to suppress anti-slavery discus- 
sion, presumably in accordance with Winthrop's agree- 
ment. The anti-slavery men complained that in spite 
of pressure and petitions from the North, these im- 
portant committees would not act, and that the com- 
mittees had been " fixed " by agreement to secure this 
masterly inactivity. They would have no more such 
committees, nor a Speaker who would so use his 
power to frustrate and defeat the anti-slavery cause. 

This little band of Free-soilers, led by David Wil- 
mot, of Pennsylvania, Joshua R. Giddings and Joseph 



84 THE LIFE OF THADDEUS STEVENS 

M. Root, of Ohio, George W. Julian, of Indiana, Pres- 
ton King, of New York, and Charles Allen and Horace 
Mann, of Massachusetts, here gave formal and pub- 
lic notice that they were ready to subordinate all 
other causes to that of resisting the further spread 
of slavery; that they would resist any further national 
protection, or patronage, to the slavery interest; and 
that they proposed to use all the political power and 
influence at their command in organizing the House, 
and in all other ways to arouse the latent sentiment 
among the old parties in the North to assert itself 
against what they deemed the aggressions of slavery. 

This policy met with fierce resentment on the part 
of Southern leaders. They, also, proposed to resist 
" aggression." They considered all opposition to 
slavery as " aggression on the rights of the South," 
and they gave peremptory notice that they would not 
yield to anti-slavery influences, the control of the im- 
portant committees having Southern interests in charge. 
They were ready to sink their former political and 
party differences in order to defeat the Free-soil pro- 
gram. Meade, of Virginia, expressed his willingness 
to take a Speaker from either party, provided he were 
known to be opposed to the abolition of slavery in the 
District of Columbia and its prohibition in the terri- 
tories. " If slavery," he said, " is to be abolished in 
the District or prohibited in the territories, I trust in 
God that my eyes have rested upon the last Speaker 
of the House of Representatives." 1 

Meade admitted that the delay in organizing the 
House came from the fear that certain anti-slavery 
1 Dec. 13, 1849, Globe, p. 26. 



ANTI-SLAVERY PHILIPPICS 85 

bills would be introduced, reported favorably and 
passed, — referring to the abolition of slavery in the 
District of Columbia, and its prohibition in the terri- 
tories. If this were done, he said, it would "either 
destroy the Confederacy or enslave a large portion of 
it," and he called upon the conservative elements of 
both parties to unite, to " crush the demon of dis- 
cord " by opposing these anti-slavery measures. 
Meade said that he was but expressing the one de- 
termination of the South, — " one solemn resolve to de- 
fend their homes and maintain their honor, contending, 
as they were, for their firesides, against the robbers who 
are seeking to despoil them of their rights and degrade 
them before the world." 

Mr. Toombs, of Georgia, whose mien and words 
were adapted to " firing the Southern heart," spoke 
even more threateningly. He did not propose to be re- 
strained by eulogies upon the Union, and he was de- 
termined to make the slavery interests of his con- 
stituents the basis of his political action. " I do not 
hesitate," he said, " to avow before this House and 
the country, and in the presence of the living God, 
that if by your legislation you seek to drive us from the 
territories of California and New Mexico, purchased 
by the common blood and treasure of the whole peo- 
ple, and to abolish slavery in this District, thereby at- 
tempting to fix a national degradation upon half the 
states of this Confederacy, / am for disunion: and if 
my physical courage be equal to the maintenance of 
my convictions of right and duty, I will devote all I 
am and all I have on earth to its consummation." 
Toombs demanded securities that the organization of 



86 THE LIFE OF THADDEUS STEVENS 

the House should not be used to the injury of his slave- 
holding constituents. If these were given there would 
be cooperation and tranquillity : if not, then, so far as 
he was concerned, " Let discord reign forever." * 

Alexander H. Stephens, a colleague of Toombs from 
Georgia, explicitly endorsed what Toombs had said. 
" The day in which aggression is consummated," he 
said, " the Union is dissolved. We do not intend to 
submit to aggressions on our rights." The Reverend 
Mr. Hilliard, a Methodist preacher, who represented 
one of the Alabama districts, in a prepared speech de- 
livered soon after the organization of the House, spoke 
with the same spirit of defiance and boldness. Hill- 
iard, like Toombs, was one of the more violent of the 
Southern " fire-eaters " and was among the most in- 
sistent defenders of slavery. He was charged by 
Stanly, a Whig-Unionist of North Carolina, with ap- 
pealing to the spirit of revolution and disunionism. 2 
Hilliard asserted that the passage of the Wilmot Pro- 
viso would drive the Southern States to resistance. He 
did not propose to discuss slavery as a moral question ; 
it was entirely political ; but he gave notice to the North 
that " the declaration of your fixed purpose to bind 
down the slaveholding states within their present 
limits, has aroused a spirit which you will find it no 
easy task to subdue." He asserted that " one feeling, 
one purpose, one spirit, moves the entire mass of 
awakened and indignant freemen ; it is their solemn 
purpose not only to resist your threatened encroach- 

1 Globe, Dec. 13, 1849, p. 28. 

2 See the controversy between Hilliard and Stanly in the 
Globe, March 6, 7, 1850. 



ANTI-SLAVERY PHILIPPICS 87 

ments, but to demand guarantees for their future 
safety. If you mean to deny us participation in the 
territories, then the time is come when the Southern 
States must decide a grave question, — either to submit 
to gradual but perfectly certain change in their organic 
structure or resist the threatened encroachment on their 
rights at every hazard." x 

It was in this spirit of positive and radical resistance 
to the anti-slavery cause that most of the Southern 
members of both parties came to the Thirty-first Con- 
gress. There were ominous signs of discord and dis- 
union. Southern States had expressed open defiance 
of the Northern purpose to restrict slavery, and a deter- 
mination had been expressed to resist restriction at all 
hazards. The Virginia Legislature had requested the 
Governor to call an extra session of that body if Con- 
gress should pass the Wilmot Proviso, and other of- 
ficial expressions had been taken looking toward a 
Southern Disunion Convention in that event. There 
was no mistaking the Southern temper on the question 
of slavery. 

There were very few men in Congress from the 
North who were prepared to meet this Southern bold- 
ness of spirit with a like attitude of defiance and re- 
sistance. The Free-soilers were among these few and 
they were there with the purpose, and with the courage, 
to press their cause even in the face of these threats 
of disunion. Joseph M. Root, of Ohio, ridiculed 
Meade's threat of dissolution, saying that if the Union 
must be dissolved he hoped it would come before the 
House were organized, for " then it would not be 
1 Globe, Feb. 14, 1850, p. 360. 



88 THE LIFE OF THADDEUS STEVENS 

binding and might be restored." But if it should come 
upon a report of a bill for the abolition of slavery in 
the District of Columbia, — " why, then, would come 
the time for a fight in defense of wife and little ones, 
the household gods and all the other household furni- 
ture." Root, in good-natured satire, expressed assur- 
ance that nothing would allay discord more than such 
calm and moderate speeches as the one just made by 
Southern gentlemen! The Wilmot Proviso had been 
denounced as " humbug and tomfoolery," but Root 
ventured to assert that " nine out of ten Whig repre- 
sentatives of the North would not, and the others dare 
not," say such a thing to their constitutents. " Let 
them do so and there would be in his section of the 
country political graves as thickly spread as the graves 
of the victims of the cholera in those villages over which 
the pestilence had swept, whose fields would be so full 
of graves as to make them look like stone-quarries, 
where there would not be turf enough for a man to 
wipe his feet on." 

The Free-soilers believed that the principle of the 
Wilmot Proviso was a deep immovable sentiment fixed 
in the hearts of the Northern people, who expected 
their representatives to speak out on all proper occa- 
sions, and that the sole policy of the old parties was to 
- dodge this question and to shirk responsibility. The 
5 Free-soilers were determined that, if they could pre- 
i-, vent it, there should be no dodging, but that the men 
from the North in the old parties should go upon 
^ record on this " most absorbing and exciting question 
stf of public policy that was then overriding all others." 
v~ When it was proposed to elect the Speaker by ballot, or 



ANTI-SLAVERY PHILIPPICS 89 

to deprive him of the power to appoint the committees, 
Root denounced both processes. One plan, he said, 
would enable men to skulk under the secret ballot ; 
while, under the other, the House would find it as hard 
to name the committees as to name the Speaker, and 
in the attempt, the same old question would arise, and 
the same terrible " demon of discord would have its 
horns up." It would not answer for a good dodge. If 
it were intended to open a hole for tender-footed Free- 
soil Democrats to escape by, it would not answer the 
purpose. They could not get out of it. No; they 
must face the music, — God help them! If the gen- 
tlemen got through such a loophole they would find 
worse troubles beyond. There must be marching 
boldly up and taking the bull by the horns." 

Root denied that it was the fault of the " impracti- 
cable Free-soilers " that the House had not been or- 
ganized. If the majority wished to carry out the 
policy of Southern gentlemen and put a gag upon a 
sentiment that was firmly established in the North, let 
them do it; they have the votes. But they should do 
it boldly, openly, manfully; there should be no loop- 
holes. He did not quarrel with Southern men for 
speaking out and acting upon their honest convictions, 
a right which the Free-soilers claimed for themselves. 
"But I would to God," said Root, "that Northern 
men representing Northern constituencies would stand 
up with the same manliness in defense of their rights as 
Southern representatives do and always have done 
since I have been a member of this House. Let North- 
ern men meet this question boldly and not try to 
dodge. Let them represent the will of their constitu- 



90 THE LIFE OF THADDEUS STEVENS 

ents, if they can conscientiously; if not, let them back 
out and leave the people free to send other representa- 
tives here who will fairly represent their views and 
feelings on this subject." 1 

Finally, on December 22nd, after three weeks of 
wrangling, a resolution was passed declaring that a 
plurality vote should elect a Speaker, and Mr. Howell 
Cobb, of Georgia, a pro-slavery Democrat, was chosen 
to the position. During the days of balloting, as 
many as twenty-four members of the House voted for 
Stevens for Speaker, among them being a number of 
Free-soilers, including Giddings, Root and Horace 
Mann. Giddings expressed the opinion that the Free- 
soilers were ready to accept Stevens on the strength 
of his known opinions and record on the subject of 
slavery. Stevens was not a Free-soiler; that is, he 
had not left the Whig party to join a new one, to 
act in politics primarily with reference to the slavery 
issue; and in the struggle over the speakership he 
supported the caucus action of his party and voted for 
Winthrop. But he had strong anti-slavery convic- 
tions ; he believed in the principle and policy for which 
the Free-soilers were standing; and he was the kind 
of a Northern representative that Root had prayed 
for, — he would stand up boldly and declare his con- 
victions about slavery extension; he was not disposed 
to compromise, nor sneak into some loophole of 
escape from responsibility, and he would not be cowed 
by Southern threats of discord and disunion. 

Stevens soon found opportunity to show his ag- 
gressive and unyielding spirit. He believed that 

1 Globe, Dec. 14, 1849, pp. 32, 33. 



ANTI-SLAVERY PHILIPPICS 91 

Northern representatives were shrinking too timidly 
before the angry menaces and threats from the South. 
He was not alarmed by these threats of disunion, 
which, as it appeared to him, were leading many 
Northern men to disavow their solemnly declared 
opinions and to prove recreant to the interest of the 
nation by withdrawing opposition to the spread of 
slavery. That the Union-saving propensities of the 
Northern Whigs were leading them to abandon their 
former anti-slavery purposes was seen in the fact that 
Root's resolution prohibiting slavery in the newly ac- 
quired territory was, on February 4, 1850, laid on the 
table by a vote of one hundred and five to seventy-five. 
Five weeks before this motion had been rejected, and 
it appeared that a majority were going to stand out 
stoutly against slavery extension. But now thirty 
Northern members, eighteen Democrats and fourteen 
Whigs, voted against the principle of the Wilmot Pro- 
viso and Congress refused to promote the policy of 
keeping slavery from the territories. 

To Stevens this seemed like yielding to Southern dic- 
tation and like an unworthy surrender of anti-slavery 
convictions. On February 29th, while the House was 
in the committee of the whole on the state of the 
Union, he obtained the floor and spoke for an hour 
on the slavery question. He assumed an attitude like 
that of a bold and honest Southerner, as defiant as 
Toombs, — quite different from what Southern gen- 
tlemen were used to in their Northern colleagues. 
They were accustomed to pleas for peace, and to 
honeyed speeches about the Union and the glorious 
sacrifices of the sisterhood of states in the Revolution. 



92 THE LIFE OF THADDEUS STEVENS 

Stevens showed them another tone, a tone that was 
quite different from that of the " doughfaces " from 
the North that the advocates of slavery were used to 
dealing with, and it was, perhaps, a tone that the fiery- 
spirits from the South stood in need of. 

Stevens' apology for speaking and consuming the 
time of the House in a general discussion, was that 
he saw no prospect of any practical legislation; the 
time, as he thought, was being occupied by speeches on 
the subject of slavery, mostly by Southern men with 
a well-defined object, partly to intimidate Congress, 
partly to kill time, so that no legislation could be ma- 
tured obnoxious to Southern gentlemen. Indeed, on 
that point the House was not left to conjecture, since 
Mr. Clingman, of North Carolina, who had " been 
selected to open the debate in behalf of human bond- 
age, distinctly notified us that unless Congress sub- 
mitted to settle the slavery question according to 
Southern demands, there should be no legislation, even 
to the passage of the appropriation bills necessary to 
sustain the government." Stevens denounced this pur- 
pose as a well-defined and palpable conspiracy of 
Southern members to st#p the supplies and disorganize 
and dissolve the government, — if any anti-slavery 
legislation were attempted. " We can say anything 
within these walls or beyond them with impunity, 
unless it be to agitate in favor of human liberty — 
that is aggression! " 

What was the grave offense that was held to justify 
the threat of disunion ? The refusal to extend an evil, 
an unmitigated wrong, — the apprehension that the 
Congress of this free republic would not propagate, 



ANTI-SLAVERY PHILIPPICS 93 

nor permit to be propagated, the institution of human 
slavery into her vast territories now free. This thing 
sought to be forced upon the territories at the risk of 
treason and rebellion, Stevens described as " a gigantic 
evil that ought to be interdicted and opposed by states- 
men, philanthropists and moralists," notwithstanding 
the bold position taken by the gentlemen from the 
South. 

While thus announcing his unchangeable hostility to 
slavery in every form and in every place, Stevens 
avowed his determination to stand by all the compro- 
mises of the Constitution and carry them into effect. 
Some of these compromises he very much disliked, but 
they were in the Constitution and he would not disturb 
them. Under these compromises he recognized, with 
regret, that Congress had no power over slavery in 
the states. But wherever that institution was within 
the control of Congress he would go, regardless of all 
threats, for its certain and final extinction. 

" I know of no one who claims the right, or desires 
to touch it within the states. But when we come to 
form governments for territories acquired long since 
the formation of the Constitution, and to admit new 
states whose only claim for admission depends on the 
will of Congress, we are bound to discharge that duty 
as shall best contribute to the prosperity, the power, 
the permanency and the glory of the nation." 

Stevens then brought into review the merits of 
slavery, to determine whether in any respect it tended 
to contribute to the national welfare. He first de- 
nounced the system of slave labor from an economic 
point of view. Slavery absorbed the land for the 



O 



94 THE LIFE OF THADDEUS STEVENS 

few, preventing its being settled by freemen. Its la- 
borers, " having no ambition to gratify, no love of 
gain to stimulate them, no parental feelings to impel 
them to action, are idle and wasteful. When the lash 
is the only stimulant, the spirit of man revolts from 
labor. Despotism may be powerful and long sustained 
by a mixed population of serfs and nobles; but free 
representative republics that rely upon the voluntary 
action of the people never can. Under such govern- 
ments those who defend and support the country must 
have a stake in the soil ; must have interests to protect 
and rights to defend. Slave countries can never have 
such a yeomanry. 

" There is no sound connecting link between the 
aristocrat and the slave. True, there is a class of 
human beings between them; but they are the most 
worthless and miserable of mankind. The poor white 
laborer is the scorn of the slave himself. For slavery 
always degrades labor. The white people who work 
with their hands are ranked with the other laborers, — 
the slaves. They feel that they are degraded and 
despised and their minds and conduct generally con- 
form to their condition." 

Slavery, besides degrading the laboring population, 
tends to exhaust and waste the land. Sloth, negli- 
gence, improvidence are its consequences. Stevens 
proceeded to compare Virginia very unfavorably with 
her sister states in the North. The richest, most 
populous, most powerful state at the time of the 
adoption of the Constitution, what is Virginia now? 
With a climate and natural resources unsurpassed, 
Virginia has fallen behind. Now New York will 



ANTI-SLAVERY PHILIPPICS 95 

treble her in population. While towns and thriving 
cities are springing up in the North, in Virginia there 
is scarcely a new town within her borders, and " her 
ancient villages wear the appearance of mournful decay. 
Her minerals and timber are unwrought. Her noble 
water power is but partially occupied. Her fine har- 
bors are without ships, except from other ports; and 
her seaport towns are without commerce and falling 
into decay. Ask yourself the cause, sir, and I will 
abide the answer." 

Slavery prevents the diffusion of education. Under 
that system education is a privilege only for the rich. 
"The poor white laborer's children could never be 
permitted to mingle in the same schools and sit upon 
the same benches with the rich men's sons. That 
would be offensive." 

In referring to the " blood and treasure and gallantry 
of the South," of which much had been said, Stevens 
admitted that the South had furnished " most of the 
men who have borne the official burdens of the govern- 
ment both in the civil and the military list." " The 
South has always furnished officers for our armies; 
Presidents for the republic; most of our foreign am- 
bassadors; heads of departments; chiefs of bureaus; 
and, sometimes, in her proud humility, has consented 
that the younger sons of her dilapidated houses should 
monopolize the places of clerks and messengers to the 
government. But whence are drawn the common 
soldiery, the men who peril their lives and win victories 
for your glory ? Almost entirely from the Free States. 
. . . Our Northern freemen have always filled the 
ranks of the regular army. The South has lent us 



96 THE LIFE OF THADDEUS STEVENS 

the gentlemen to wear the epaulettes and the sword ; to 
take command of our troops and lead them to southern 
and western climates to fight the frontier battles and 
whiten your fields with their bones." 

Stevens opposed the diffusion of slavery because 
confining it " within its present limits would bring 
the states themselves to its gradual abolition." 
" Let the disease spread, and although it will render 
the whole body leprous and loathsome, yet it will long 
survive. Confine it, and like the cancer that is tending 
to the heart, it must be eradicated or it will eat out 
the vitals." 

This result, the gradual abolition of slavery, which 
according to the admission of Southern men them- 
selves would follow its restriction, was to Stevens' 
mind the most agreeable consequence of that policy. 
" Confine this malady within its present limits. Sur- 
round it by a cordon of freemen that it can not spread, 
and in less than twenty-five years every slaveholding 
state in this Union will have on its statute books a 
law for the gradual and final extinction of slavery. 
Then will have been consummated the fondest wishes 
of every patriot's heart. Then will our fair country 
be glorious indeed, and be to posterity a bright example 
of the true principles of government — of universal 
freedom." 

Referring to the claim set forth by Meade, of Vir- 
ginia, that the value of Virginia's half million of 
slave population was chiefly dependent on Southern 
demand, Stevens asked what meaning attached to such 
a humiliating confession. " In plain English, what 
does it mean? That Virginia is now only fit to be 



ANTI-SLAVERY PHILIPPICS 97 

the breeder, not the employer of slaves. That she 
is reduced to the condition that her proud chivalry 
are compelled to turn slave-traders for a livelihood! 
Instead of attempting to renovate the soil, and by 
their own honest labor compelling the earth to yield 
her abundance; instead of seeking for the best breed 
of cattle and horses to feed on her hills and valleys 
and fertilize the land, the sons of that great state 
must devote their time to selecting and grooming the 
most lusty sires and the most fruitful wenches to 
supply the slave barracoons of the South! And the 
gentleman pathetically laments that the profits of this 
genteel traffic will be greatly lessened by the circum- 
scription of slavery. This is his picture, not mine." 
He denounced the government, both state and na- 
tional, as a despotism to the extent of government's 
support of slavery. That government is despotic 
where the rulers govern subjects by their own mere 
will. " In this government the free white citizens 
are the rulers, — the sovereigns, as we delight to call 
them. All others are subjects. In this government 
the subject has no rights, social, political or personal. 
He has no voice in the laws which govern him. He 
can hold no property. His very wife and children 
are not his. His labor is another's. He and all that 
pertains to him are the absolute property of his rulers. 
He is governed, bought, sold, punished, executed, by 
laws to which he never gave his assent, and by rulers 
whom he never chose. He is not a serf merely, with 
half the rights of men, like the subjects of despotic 
Russia; but a naked slave, stripped of every right 
which God and nature gave him, and which the high 



O 



98 THE LIFE OF THADDEUS STEVENS 

spirit of our revolution declared inalienable — which 
he himself could not surrender, and which man could 
not take from him. Is he not then the subject of 
despotic sway? 

"But we are told that it is none of our business; 
that Southern slavery is a matter between the slave- 
holder and his own conscience. I trust it may be 
so decided by impartial history and the unerring 
Judge; that we may not be branded with that great 
stigma and that grievous burden may not weigh upon 
our souls. But could we hope for that justification, if 
now, when we have the power to prevent it, we should 
permit this evil to spread over thousands of square 
leagues now free and settle upon unborn millions? 
Sir, for myself, I should look upon any Northern 
man, enlightened by a Northern education, who would, 
directly or indirectly, by omission or commission, by 
basely voting or cowardly skulking, permit it to spread 
over one rood of God's free earth, as a traitor to 
liberty and a recreant to God! " 

Stevens again quoted Meade to the effect that though 
the South had been " in a numerical minority in the 
Union for fifty years yet during the greater part of 
that period we have managed to control the destinies 
of the Union." Stevens regarded this statement as 
both candid and true, and he did not complain of it. 
" But," he said, " I can not listen to the recital without 
feeling the burning blush on my countenance that the 
North, with her overshadowing millions of freemen, 
has, for half a century, been tame and servile enough 
to submit to this arrogant rule." He denounced the 
arrogance, the insults, and insolent threats of Southern 



ANTI-SLAVERY PHILIPPICS 99 

men. Congress had been intimidated and the North 
had been frightened from its proper course. " Dough- 
faces " had been found in plenty to act as the servile 
tools of the slave-driver. He hoped that the race of 
the "doughface" had become extinct. They were 
an unmanly unvirile race; the old ones were in deep 
political graves and it was hoped that they had left 
no descendants. " For them I am sure there is no 
resurrection, for they were soulless. Now, when the 
whole civilized world is denouncing slavery as a curse, 
a shame and a crime, I trust that when the great battle 
between liberty and slavery comes to be fought on this 
floor, there will none be found hiding among the 
stuff, no fraudulent concealments, not one accursed 
Achan in this whole camp of the Representatives of 
freemen." 1 

Stevens closed his speech with an appeal to the ac- 
complished gentleman from Alabama (Reverend Mr. 
Hilliard) who might, he said, " with fervid piety and 
eloquence more thrilling than that which made Felix 
tremble, warn his illustrious friend, the President, of 
the awful, the inexorable doom — 'Accursed is the 
man-stealer ' " ; and he asked the House spokesman of 
the lowly Nazarene to inquire of his own conscience, 
as he contemplated " the thronging thousands travel- 
ing to the great dread tribunal, summoned to give 
evidence of deeds done in the body, who was most 
likely to meet a hearty welcome there, — he whose cause 
was advocated by the supplicating voices of thousands 
with whom he had dealt justly on earth and made 
free indeed, or he whose admission should be with- 

1 Globe, Feb. 20, 1850, Append. Vol. 22, Part 1, pp. 141-143. 



ioo THE LIFE OF THADDEUS STEVENS 

stood by myriads of crushed and lacerated souls, show- 
ing their chains, their stripes and their wounds to 
their Father and to his Father; to their God and to 
his Judge." * 

As was to be expected, this speech did not go down 
very well with Southern members. It was made with 
a purpose, not of arousing, but of opposing the fiery 
Southern spirit, by setting forth something of the 
same bold and fighting temper that Southern repre- 
sentatives had been manifesting. Such a speech was 
most irritating to the ardent defenders of slavery. A 
few days later Millson, of Virginia, reflected this irri- 
tation. He took special umbrage at Stevens' refer- 
ence to the " degradation of Virginia," the land of 
Washington, Jefferson, Mason, Marshall, the Ran- 
dolphs and the Lees. He referred to the " gross and 
offensive allusions," the " feeling of loathing and in- 
dignation " excited by language that " was so gross 
as not to bear repetition." 2 

Williams, of Tennessee, said that the gentleman 
from Pennsylvania had " grossly slandered the South, 
forcing the conviction that he had at some period of 
his life been a political bankrupt; that he was here 
by accident; that he had made a desperate, reckless, 
daredevil move to obtain a forward position in Penn- 
sylvania on a popular hobby." 3 

Stanton, of Kentucky, resented Stevens' description 
of the free white population of the South. He him- 
self had sprung from that class : ly denounced. 

1 Globe, Appen., Feb. 20, 1850, pp. 

2 Globe, Feb. 21 and 26. 

3 Appendix, Globe, p. 292, March 1 



ANTI-SLAVERY PHILIPPICS 101 

He pronounced Stevens' charges as " base unmiti- 
gated slanders," and he affirmed that the free laborers 
of his state were as "moral, intelligent, high-minded 
and patriotic a class of men as could be found in 
any state of the Union." "If the gentleman with 
his dispostion to vilify and slander persons of whom 
he knows nothing, should come among us there is not 
a respectable negro who would deem him a fit asso- 
ciate. Let the gentleman look at the poverty of the 
North and the wretched condition of the free laborers 
there." * 

Stanly, of North Carolina, denounced Stevens for 
uttering " sentiments clothed in language that a South- 
ern gentleman would not use to a respectable negro." 
He referred to Stevens as an old " Anti-Mason," from 
whom idtraism was to be expected. " And since Anti- 
Masonry will no longer serve for a hobby-horse, the 
gentleman must preach against the horrors and despot- 
ism of slavery. I hope his next speech will be fit to 
read in the families of Pennsylvania farmers," and that 
f the gentleman will find some other Morgan to 
frighten the grandmothers and children of Pennsyl- 
vania with. I ask him to let us alone." 

It is doubtless true that if the Southern slave- 
holders had been " let alone " in their purpose and 
desire to retain and extend human slavery there would 
have been no quarrel, no antagonism, no friction. 
But if any one attempted, without mincing his words, 
to lay bare the evils of slavery; if he sought boldly 
to restrict its ar and to use the power of the national 
government to weaken and restrain it and to put it in 
1 Globe, March n, 1850. 



102 THE LIFE OF THADDEUS STEVENS 

the course of ultimate extinction, then he was " an 
enemy to the South," he was "vilifying the Southern 
people," and he was " fomenting dangerous agitation, 
sectionalism and disunion." In the bitter hostility 
that was visited upon him for his course in this mat- 
ter, Stevens was no exception. Horace Mann, edu- 
cator, philanthropist, and friend of humanity, shared 
with Stevens and all other radical anti-slavery men, 
the denunciation of Southern representatives. Mann 
had asserted that the term " Free-soiler," which ap- 
plied to him, was constantly used upon the floor of 
Congress as " a term of ignominy and reproach." 
When he spoke out in defense of the cause for which 
the Free-soiler stood, i. e., the exclusion of slavery 
from the territories, and the purpose " to stand upon 
the frontier to keep the sin of slavery from crossing 
its borders," Mann was denounced for making a speech 
that was " offensive to every Southern man in the 
house, as if he delighted to wound Southern feel- 
ing " ; he was represented as " fanning the flames of 
fanaticism " and " outraging the feeling of his fellow- 
members," whose speech was " unworthy of being 
spoken of in respectful terms." 1 

Mann had drawn a forcible picture of the dark and 
dread conditions under civil war and disunion which, 
he said, rash spirits from the South were threatening. 
They were proposing such a hazard, not that they 
" might defend the rights of man but in order to 
subjugate a realm to slavery." But with all the hor- 
rors of disunion and civil war before him Mann said 
he would accept such a war rather than an extension of 
1 Stanly, of North Carolina, March 6, 1850. Append., p. 341. 



ANTI-SLAVERY PHILIPPICS 103 

slavery, — " better anything that God in His providence 
shall send than an extension of the boundaries of 
slavery." 1 

If Mann, gentle, refined and scholarly, who uttered 
his severe truths without any spirit of retaliation or 
crimination, could be so denounced for his noble speech 
— noble both in its content and its purpose — ■ how 
much more might it be expected that Southern wrath 
would descend upon the head of Stevens, who had less 
regard for the tender feelings of his opponents, and 
who had no scruple against fighting a foe with his 
own words and weapons. No outspoken opponent 
of slavery could expect to escape Southern wrath. 
The sum total of anti-slavery sinning was in the fail- 
ure to keep silence. But if sharp and bitter words, 
if anger and indignation and hot-tempered denuncia- 
tion were to be a part of the legislative warfare upon 
which the slaveholders had entered, they were to find 
in Stevens an opponent who was also past master in 
that art. He was more than a match for any of 
them in that kind of fighting. He anticipated exactly 
the spirit that he had aroused. It is not improbable 
that he took a wee bit of pleasure in irritating the 
Southern leaders and provoking them to excessive 
speech. And when they exposed themselves by de- 
fending a social system so indefensible as was Amer- 
ican slavery, they gave him the cue for his stinging 
shafts. He was unmoved by their angry denuncia- 
tion. At any rate, he did not propose to be deterred 
from expressing on the floor of the American Con- 
gress and in the face of slaveholders, if need be, his 

1 Globe, Feb. 15, 1850, Append., pp. 218-224. 



104 THE LIFE OF THADDEUS STEVENS 

abhorrence of slavery and his belief in its criminal- 
ity. 

Later in the session, on June 10, 1850, while dis- 
cussing the California question, he improved the op- 
portunity again to discuss the evils of slavery, and 
this second attack was even fiercer than the first. 
As to California and the territories, he first laid down 
the sound constitutional doctrine — a doctrine since 
affirmed by the Supreme Court in the Insular cases — 
that the Constitution does not of itself extend over 
new territory. No territorial officer holds by a con- 
stitutional tenure. No law of the United States was 
ever supposed to be extended to any of the terri- 
tories by mere force of the Constitution. The Fugi- 
tive Slave Clause does not, and a slave escaping to 
New Mexico or California would be instantly free. 
A special act of Congress would be necessary to make 
the law apply. Such was Stevens' argument. 

He held that Congress could abolish or prevent 
slavery in the territories, but could establish it no- 
where, since to do so would be inconsistent with the 
fundamental principles of the government set forth 
in the Declaration of Independence. Whenever those 
principles are not altered or overruled by the Consti- 
tution they control the action of the government. 

Then, since slavery had been constantly defended 
upon the floor as a blessing and a divine institution, 
he thought it proper to examine again into its char- 
acter. He had expected to be assailed by the de- 
fenders of slavery and, now, his renewed effort would, 
of course, bring down upon him all its venom. He 
found consolation in the career of John Ouincy 






ANTI-SLAVERY PHILIPPICS 10$ 

Adams who, because of his defending human rights 
and denouncing slavery in that hall, had been made 
the object of the bitterest personal abuse in the House. 
" No motives were too foul to impute to him ; no 
crimes too atrocious to charge upon him." Stevens 
disclaimed the vanity of expecting " to be touched by 
any of the rays of that glory which will forever sur- 
round his (Adams') name on account of the calumnies, 
the insults, and the persecutions, which he endured in 
this high and holy cause." 

Stevens complained that the attention of the South- 
ern members had been directed, not to his speech, but 
to him personally. No one had attempted to deny 
his facts or refute his arguments. They had merely 
applied personal vituperation and the filth and slime 
of " Billingsgate "; that he would leave to fish-women 
and to their coadjutors, these gentlemen from the 
South. 

Stevens then turned his attention to the defense 
that had been made of slavery, that it was a blessing, 
moral, political, personal; that the slaves were better 
off than the laboring freemen in the North; that, in 
many instances, having tried freedom, the slaves had 
voluntarily returned to bondage. " Well," said Ste- 
vens, " if this be so, let us give all a chance to enjoy 
this blessing. Let the slaves who choose, go free; 
and the free who choose, become slaves. If these 
gentlemen believe there is a word of truth in what 
they preach, the slaveholders need be under no ap- 
prehension that they will ever lack bondsmen. Their 
slaves would remain and many freemen would seek 
admission to this happy condition. If these Southern 



106 THE LIFE OF THADDEUS STEVENS 

gentlemen and their Northern sycophants are sincere 
and correct, they have just cause of complaint, the 
only aggression the North has ever inflicted upon them, 
because for two centuries the North has contributed 
to secure to a particular race the whole advantage of 
this blissful condition of slavery, imposing on the 
white race the cares, the troubles, the lean anxieties 
of freedom. This inconsistent monopoly should be 
corrected. If it will save the Union, let these gen- 
tlemen introduce a ' compromise,' by which these 
races may change conditions; by which the oppressed 
master may slide into that happy state where he can 
stretch his sleek limbs on the sunny ground without 
fear of deranging his toilet, and with no care for 
to-morrow, when another will be bound to find him 
meat and drink, food and raiment, and provide for 
the infirmities and helplessness of old age. 

" A few short years of apprenticeship would fit the 
white man for slavery. True, in becoming a slave 
he would lose half the man; in fact, all manhood 
might be expunged, except the faint glimmerings of 
an immortal soul. But let the white man not be 
discouraged. He may attain that blissful state of 
slavery if he will go courageously to the swamp, spade 
and mattock in hand, and uncovered and half- naked, 
toil beneath the broiling sun. If he will go to his 
hut at night and sleep on the bare ground and go forth 
in the morning unwashed to his daily labor, a few 
short years, or a generation or two, at most, will give 
him a color that will pass muster in the most fastidious 
and pious slave market in Christendom. His shape, 
through parched and swollen lips and with his feet 



ANTI-SLAVERY PHILIPPICS 107 

unconfined by shoes, will also gradually conform to 
his condition; and the mind, cut off from all ambitious 
aspirations, will soon lose all foolish and perplexing 
desires for freedom, and the whole man will be sunk 
into slavery's most happy and contented indifference." 
Stevens vigorously condemned the Southern clergy- 
men who were using their talents and office to praise 
the comforts and advantages of slavery. He would 
not answer their " absurd and blasphemous position," 
but this he would say, that " these reverend parasites 
do more to make infidels than all the writings of 
Hume, Voltaire and Paine. If it were once shown 
that the Bible authorized, sanctioned, and enjoined 
slavery, no good man would be a Christian. It con- 
tains no such horrible doctrine. But if it did, it 
would be conclusive evidence, to my mind, that it is 
a spurious imposition, and not the word of the God who 
is the Father of all men and no respecter of persons. 
He indeed must have a callous heart who can speak 
of the benevolence of slavery." Comparing slavery to 
Dante's Inferno, where those in the innermost circle, 
Lucifer and Judas Iscariot, suffered the greatest torture 
while those in the outer circles suffered less, he hoped 
that in the next edition there would be added another 
inner circle for the Traitors to Liberty; and he main- 
tained that, notwithstanding the difference in degrees 
of suffering in slavery, the whole system was one 
cruel, desolate, horrible hell. " These reverend per- 
verters of scripture might devote their subtlety to 
locating the exact spot where the most comfort might 
be enjoyed, — the coolest corner in the lake that burns 
with fire and brimstone." 



108 THE LIFE OF THADDEUS STEVENS 

He resented the charge of fanaticism. " There can 
be no fanatics in the cause of genuine liberty. Fanati- 
cism is excessive seal. There may be fanatics in false 
religion, in superstition. But there can be no fanati- 
cism, however high the enthusiasm, however warm the 
zeal, in true religion, or in the cause of national, uni- 
versal liberty." 

He noticed the claim that those who were preaching 
freedom were the slaves' worst enemies, that they were 
merely causing their burdens to be made heavier. It 
had been so with tyrants in every age. Moses and 
Aaron, those " fanatical abolitionists," when they agi- 
tated " for freedom in Egypt," found it so. " The 
nearer the oppressed is to freedom, the more hopeful 
the struggle, the more friends that are raised up for 
him, the tighter the master rivets his chains. Pha- 
raoh had hardened his heart. But did the Lord regard 
Moses as the worst enemy of those in bondage and 
command him to desist? No, he was commanded to 
agitate again ; and the plagues came, though the great 
slaveholder did not relax his grasp on his victims 
until there was wailing throughout the land over the 
first born slain in every household." So, he feared, 
it would be in this land of wicked slavery. He warned 
the Southern people to write Justice on their door- 
posts, " that when the destroying Angel goes forth, as 
go forth he will, he may pass you by." 

He would never consent to the admission of another 
Slave State, nor to the increase of slave representation. 
He considered it an outrage on every representative 
principle that there should be " twenty-five representa- 



ANTI-SLAVERY PHILIPPICS 109 

tives in Congress who were virtually the representa- 
tives of slaves alone." 

He expressed his abhorrence of the word " compro- 
mise " when applied to human rights. It was known 
that when Congress assembled, a large majority were 
in favor of prohibiting slavery from the territories 
and against admitting new Slave States. But terror, 
treason, and threats had been used to compel that 
majority to yield to a turbulent minority. He referred 
to the compromise bill as a " monster," and he looked 
for an opportunity of " knocking it in the head." He 
denounced the " ten million bribe to Texas " and the 
proposal to appropriate two hundred millions in order 
to exile, by colonization in Africa, Virginia's free 
black population. When asked if New England had 
not sold and imported slaves, he replied that she had ; 
"she was very wicked; she has long since repented. 
Go, ye, and do likewise." 

Stevens disclaimed a desire to make personal re- 
proaches and all ill-will toward any human being. 
" Least of all would I reproach the South. I honor 
her courage and fidelity. Even in a bad, a wicked 
cause, she shows a united front. All her sons are 
faithful to the cause of human bondage, because it is 
their cause. But the North — the poor, timid, mer- 
cenary, driveling North — has no such united defenders 
of her cause, although it is the cause of human liberty. 
Even her own great men have turned her accusers. She 
is the victim of low ambition — an ambition which pre- 
fers self to country, personal aggrandizement to the 
high cause of human liberty." 



no THE LIFE OF THADDEUS STEVENS 

Stevens denounced as odious the Fugitive Slave 
Law of 1793, which, he said, should be repealed. He 
would have the remedy for fleeing slaves left where 
the Constitution left it, without any legislation what- 
ever. He adduced harsh and abusive court judgments 
under the Act of 1793, whereby worthy citizens of 
Pennsylvania had been heavily fined " for no greater 
offense than giving a cup of water and a crust of bread 
to a famishing man whom they knew to be fleeing 
from bondage." The new law now proposed, in 1850, 
doubled these penalties and, what was more obnoxious, 
it recognized slavery in the territories. He denounced 
in unsparing terms these new provisions for the re- 
covery of escaping slaves. A black man might prove 
that he was born free and had resided in a Free State 
all his life, but he would not be permitted to do it; 
the conclusive evidence in the case was to be the record 
or affidavit, made up, it might be, a thousand miles 
from the party whose safety was involved in it. His 
" learned judges, these tide waiters and country 
postmasters, who make no pretensions to legal learn- 
ing, — are compelled not to judge, but to decide with- 
out judging, that the affidavit of a distant soul-dealer 
is evidence of slavery which can not be gainsaid. Be- 
hold what a court and jury are to pass on human lib- 
erty! An overseer, with a power of attorney; the 
affidavit of a professional slave-trader; an itinerant 
postmaster from Virginia signing judgment in a bar- 
room; the defendant a handcuffed negro, without 
counsel, witness, or judge! Verily a second Daniel 
has come to judgment ! 

"The distinguished Senator from Kentucky (Mr. 



ANTI-SLAVERY PHILIPPICS nil 

Clay) wishes further to make it the duty of all by- 
standers to aid in the capture of fugitives ; to join 
the chase and run down the party. This is asking 
more than my constituents will ever grant. They will 
strictly abide by the Constitution. The slaveholder 
may pursue his slave among them with his own for- 
eign myrmidons, unmolested, except by their frowning 
scorn. But no law that tyranny can pass will ever 
induce them to join the hue and cry after the trembling 
wretch who has escaped from unjust bondage. Their 
fair land shall never become the hunting-ground 
on which the bloodhounds of slavery shall course their 
prey and command them to join the hunt." 

Stevens said that he was aware of the temerity of 
his remarks, of how little effect they would have, com- 
ing from " so obscure a quarter." He believed the 
" compromise " bill was winning favor with the people, 
most of whom had never read it, because it was ad- 
vocated by great names in whom they were accustomed 
to confide. These great overshadowing names have a 
fictitious force given to their views and are leading 
captive the public mind, and the people are not left 
free to decide these questions on their intrinsic merits. 
Thus it is that the errors of the great are fatal, while 
the errors of the small may do but little harm. " The 
errors of obscure men die with them and cast no shame 
on their posterity. How different with the great ! 

" In this crisis of the fate of liberty, if any of the 
renowned men of this nation should betray her cause, 
it were better that they had been unknown to fame. 
It need not be hoped that the brightness of their past 
glory will dazzle the eyes of posterity, or illumine the 



H2 THE LIFE OE JHADDEUS STEVENS 

pages of impartial history. A few of its rays may 
still linger on a fading sky ; but they will soon be over- 
whelmed in the blackness of darkness. For, unless 
progressive civilization and the increasing love of free- 
dom throughout the Christian and civilized world are 
fallacious, the Sun of Liberty, of universal liberty, is 
already above the horizon, and fast coursing to his 
meridian 'splendor, when no apologist of slavery can 
look upon his face and live." l 

These speeches show Stevens' deep-seated and in- 
tense hatred of slavery. His attitude was uncom- 
promising, his speech unsparing. His policy was to 
bring not peace but the sword. For the spirit of 
strife and turbulence that existed he believed that 
slavery and its defenders were responsible, and that the 
extension of slavery, which the Southern leaders an- 
nounced themselves to be ready to stand for at the 
hazard of disunion, should be firmly resisted with 
the same spirit of hazard; and he was firmly of the 
conviction that slave extension could not be pre- 
vented by the soft words that turneth away wrath. He 
had no desire to maintain peace with slavery. Slavery 
extension and the national welfare were at war, and if 
the slave system asserted its right to the national do- 
main, Stevens would prosecute war against that claim 
with all the force he could command. He would let 
the Northern doughfaces prate about " the dove-like 

1 Globe, June 10, 1850, Append., pp. 765-769. Stevens ap- 
pended a foot-note to this speech, in which he criticized the 
Reverend Moses Stuart, professor in the Andover Theological 
Seminary, for his defense of the "blessings and comforts" of 
slavery, in a work that " contains," as Stevens said, " a very 
glowing eulogy on the Honorable Daniel Webster and rather a 
faint one on the Bible." 



ANTI-SLAVERY PHILIPPICS 1113 

messengers that will bring peace, happiness and pros- 
perity to our devoted and glorious confederacy." As 
for himself he would not yield to the pro-slavery de- 
mands in the vain hope of thereby securing peace. 
Although the great leaders of his Whig party, Clay 
and Webster, sought peace at the expense of allaying 
all opposition to slavery, he would not follow them. 

It was Clay, especially, who undertook, as his cus- 
tom was, the office of the peacemaker. The primary 
object of Clay's political career was to promote and 
preserve the American Union. He did not share 
Stevens' convictions and feelings about the evils of 
slavery. He had a keener appreciation of the danger 
to the Union, and to him the first duty of the hour was 
to remove that danger. Clay, perhaps, knew better 
than Stevens the purpose and temper of the pro-slavery 
leaders, and therefore he was ready to make conces- 
sions for the sake of peace and conciliation. In his 
" compromises " he proposed a series of measures cov- 
ering the whole field in dispute, — the admission of 
California as a Free State; a more effective fugitive 
slave law; the abolition of the slave trade, though not 
of slavery, in the District of Columbia; the organiza- 
tion of territorial governments in New Mexico and 
Utah without the Wilmot Proviso; immunity for the 
interstate slave trade; and a payment to Texas of 
$10,000,000 for her claim to New Mexico. This com- 
bination of measures made concessions to both sides; 
it also aroused opposition from both sides. As a com- 
bination in what was called the " omnibus bill " the 
measures were defeated, but separated into five distinct 
bills they went through Congress one by one. Stevens 



i 



ii4 THE LIFE OF THADDEUS STEVENS 

voted to the last against organizing the territories with- 
out the Wilmot Proviso and against the new fugitive 
slave law. The compromisers joined with the anti- 
slavery men to pass the anti-slavery features of Clay's 
proposals, and they joined the pro-slavery men to pass 
the pro-slavery features, and thus, all five of Clay's 
measures were passed and the " five gaping wounds " 
from which the country was suffering were healed for a 
time. 

Stevens was reelected to Congress in 1850. Again, 
when the House was being organized in the Thirty- 
second Congress, he received support for the speaker- 
ship, among the sixteen voting for him being Joshua 
R. Giddings and Horace Mann. The compromise 
measures were looked upon as being a " finality " ; 
there was to be no more legislation or agitation on the 
subject of slavery. There was a cessation of hostili- 
ties on that subject during most of the Thirty-second 
Congress, and Stevens had but little occasion to speak 
on the vexed question. 

On June 11, 1852, he made an extended speech on 
the " Public Lands and the Tariff," — chiefly on the 
tariff. Stevens was a consistent and constant pro- 
tectionist, a true Pennsylvanian in this regard, and 
his speech set forth, with his decisive effectiveness, 
the usual protectionist arguments. He asserted that 
the doctrine of free trade had never been reduced to 
practise except among barbarian tribes; that every 
highly cultivated nation has made the protection of 
domestic industry the special care of government ; that 
twenty centuries of history had shown this to be the 



ANTI-SLAVERY PHILIPPICS 115 

wise policy of nations, — the protection of domestic in- 
dustries by discriminating duties. 

Stevens illustrated his protective contention by ex- 
amples in history, — of Tyre, Holland, and Great 
Britain. England, when Holland had an immense 
start in capital and skill, could not afford to apply the 
free trade doctrine. That doctrine would have exactly 
suited Holland ; that would have left her forever with- 
out a rival. For the nation which is far above all 
others in knowledge and means, that system which will 
keep other nations from starting at all is the true one. 
Just so surely it is the wrong one for those who are 
behind. " The statesmen of England were deluded by 
no such folly as free trade. They excluded the 
manufactures of other nations and gave the home 
market exclusively to their own artisans, so as to in- 
duce them to invest their time, capital and talents in 
the creation of domestic fabrics. She admitted free the 
raw material which she could not produce, prohibited 
the importation of many articles, and laid heavy dis- 
criminating duties on others." He cited the highly 
protective features of the English Navigation Acts. 
Her manufactures and commercial marine have in- 
creased until she has become " the most manufacturing, 
commercial, rich, and powerful nation the world ever 
saw." This position she acquired through protection, 
— and now she is preaching free trade to young na- 
tions ! 

Stevens denied that the protective tariff was for the 
benefit of the rich. It was mainly for the benefit of 
the laborer. It helped capital because it helped labor, 



n6 THE LIFE OE THADDEUS STEVENS 

as it was impossible to benefit one without the other. 
Labor is the chief factor in the manufactured product ; 
therefore to labor comes the chief benefit of protection. 

No class receives greater benefit from the policy of 
protection than the farmers. The farmer's wealth is 
in his surplus products, whose value depends upon a 
ready, handy, constant market. The nearer to his 
farm you bring that market, the better for him. If 
his products are sold in a foreign market he must de- 
duct from his profits the cost of freight. To create 
that market at home it is necessary to build up manu- 
facturing villages, towns and cities in your own land. 
Your consumers are now three thousand miles distant. 
iWe should build flourishing cities, — Birminghams, 
Sheffields and Glasgows, — within our own borders, 
on the Great Lakes and on the waters that feed the 
Mississippi. If the whole West were to be given up 
to agriculture, and its produce were to go to the Atlan- 
tic cities for a market, the effect would be to depress 
and destroy the farming interests of the Middle and 
Eastern States, and reduce real estate to half its value. 

Stevens charged upon the Democratic party that un- 
der its lead and administration, British interests were 
being protected to the detriment of American inter- 
ests. He asserted that the Walker tariff of 1846 was 
a British tariff; that during its progress there was a 
British agent here, with rooms assigned at the capital, 
to watch over its progress and facilitate its advent ; and 
now, Her Majesty has in this country vigilant friends 
guarding its safety. Under the operation of this 
British tariff the iron masters of the United States 
are not only doing a losing business, but utter and 



ANTI-SLAVERY PHILIPPICS 117 

inevitable ruin stares them in the face without speedy 
relief from Congress. 

There are two ways, his argument continued, by 
which our manufacturers may compete with those of 
Europe. The one is to lay a duty on foreign im- 
portations equal to the difference between the cost 
of producing the article in Europe and the cost of pro- 
ducing it here. The other is to reduce the price of 
labor in America to the average price of labor in 
Europe. The Whig policy was to impose a duty equal 
to the difference in the cost of labor in the two coun- 
tries. The Democratic policy was to reduce the price 
paid to the laborer. He described the poor fare and 
the mean living of the laborer abroad where women in 
collieries were harnessed to cars to draw their heavy 
loads. There, the laborers can only grow up in igno- 
rance, and remain hewers of wood and drawers of 
water. Those who wish to degrade labor will pursue 
this Democratic policy ; for his part, he preferred the 
protective policy which gives to laborers the dignity 
and feelings of independent freemen. England's re- 
peal of her corn laws only gave additional protection 
to her manufacturers, as it enabled them to feed their 
laboring population cheaper, and thus they could re- 
duce the price of her goods. He urged the West to 
stand for protection, make her own goods, build up a 
market for agricultural products close at hand and be- 
come independent of New England and Pennsylvania. 

It will be seen that these familiar arguments, which 
Stevens set forth with so much force, had an appli- 
cation to the tariff controversy in the generation 
that followed, as well as in that which preceded, the 



n8 THE, LIFE OE THADDEUS STEVENS 

time in which Stevens spoke. It may be doubted 
whether any of the advocates of protection ever pre- 
sented the cause with greater clearness and force. 

Later in the session, on August 12, 1852, while the 
House was in the committee of the whole on the state 
of the Union considering an army appropriation bill, 
— and while the members were taking advantage of 
the opportunity to discuss in a very general way, with 
wide latitude, party platforms, presidential candidates 
and political issues, — Stevens made a speech on the 
" Presidential Question." 

He discussed the relation of the Whig party to 
slavery, and in doing so, he could not restrain himself 
from making his usual vigorous assaults upon the " pe- 
culiar institution " and its promoters. He defined 
Whig principles as consisting of obedience to the Con- 
stitution and the laws, a protective tariff, an equal 
participation in the public lands, river and harbor im- 
provements, a sound currency, and a well regulated 
commerce. In all other things, Stevens said, Whigs 
were permitted to differ without forfeiting allegiance 
to their party. Being a national party, Whigs were 
permitted to differ upon slavery. That question was 
not incorporated into any party creed. Emancipa- 
tionists and slaveholders were in both parties. On that 
subject opinion in the North was by no means uniform. 
\ Some " who were naturally inclined to domination 
sincerely believed that a portion of the human race 
were created for no other purpose than to be the serv- 
ants of others ; that a part of mortal clay was of finer 
texture and nobler mold than the rest. This class 
was more numerous in large commercial cities where 



ANTI-SLAVERY PHILIPPICS 119 

men are more mercenary, and where princely fortunes 
beget kingly appetites." To avoid making this a party 
issue, which " could lead to nothing but mere sectional 
strife has been the honest, sincere and constant aim 
of all that portion of the Whig party that favored 
freedom." Whether this effort succeeds depends on 
the ensuing election. Slavery, being local, was not suf- 
fered to disturb national parties, for it was impossible 
to incorporate into a uni form creed for any party what 
three-fourths of the people abhorred and one-fourth 
loved. But now that slavery has grown stronger and 
its advocates have determined to extend its boundaries 
and change the whole current of public thought and 
action in regard to it, it may turn out that a combined 
South, with a modicum of Northern parasites, may be 
sufficient to bend the proudest ambition and sternest 
will of our statesmen. It has been tried in more than 
one campaign for the presidency, and it is to be seen 
whether the national will can be bent to their ends. 
That was the reason for the furor and clamor raised 
in this hall three years ago, — as if the republic were 
in flame. It was all factitious and unreal. Not for a 
moment was the Union in danger. The object of all 
the disgraceful turmoil and false clamor, of all the 
national disturbance, was to compel both parties to put 
into their party creeds a defense and propagation of 
slavery. 

Southern gentlemen are announcing that the subject 
of slavery is to be paramount to all others ; all questions 
of commerce, agriculture, manufactures, are to be re- 
jected and slavery is to become the idol of our political 
adoration. 



120 THE LIFE OF THADDEUS STEVENS 

The Whig resolutions of '52 did not, in Stevens' 
opinion, contain very good Whig doctrine. They are 
very faint on internal improvements, and they entirely 
fritter away and reduce to the standard of Loco Foco 
folly the question of a protective tariff, reducing it 
to a mere incidental, or accidental, protection, depend- 
ing entirely upon the accident of the amount of revenue 
required. The compromise resolutions are creatures of 
modern birth, not the legitimate children of Whiggery. 

Stevens arraigned Toombs, a Southern Whig, for 
abandoning all the ancient Whig doctrines — a protec- 
tive tariff, river and harbor improvements, and an equal 
participation in the public domain, — Tand for mounting 
the Democratic platform merely because it is ultra for 
the protection of slavery. For that purpose Toombs 
was preferring Pierce to Scott, as slavery would be 
safer in Pierce's hands. As to Pierce, no word or act 
of his life, as he had said of himself, was ever in con- 
flict with the pro-slavery Democratic platform of '52. 
If ever he " fell into the path of rectitude on slavery, it 
was momentary and accidental for which he was not 
to be held responsible, for all his votes and acts pro- 
claim him the champion of slavery." 

Pro-slavery Whigs were objecting to Scott because 
he had not declared that he would interpose his execu- 
tive veto to prevent the repeal of certain laws that were 
held to be final and irrepcalablc. They demanded that 
he declare his intention of using the whole power and 
patronage of his office to prevent discussion on the 
subject of slavery. Stevens denounced this attitude 
as a demand for " unmitigated tyranny." He de- 
nounced the attempt to enforce the doctrine of finality 



i 



ANTI-SLAVERY PHILIPPICS 121 

" as arbitrary and despotic." It was in harmony with 
efforts lately made to paralyze the free action of Con- 
gress and to overawe and intimidate public opinion. 
" Whenever any executive or any statesman shall com- 
mand the people not to think, or to utter their thoughts, 
and it does not cost him his political life, I shall tremble 
for the liberties of the nation. Whenever a political 
party attempts it, it deserves to die. Whoever attempts 
to enforce such principles is a detestable tyrant. Sir, 
this atrocious attempt must fail in this country." Thus 
he announced his disapproval of the fashionable doc- 
trine of the hour, the doctrine of ■ finality," in refer- 
ence to the compromises of 1850. 

Because General Scott had said, in a letter of 1843, 
that he believed it to be the duty of slaveholding states 
to abolish slavery, voluntarily and gradually, for this, 
said Stevens, " he is opposed by the bigots of slavery. 
I thank God that he has such a cause of opposition." 

Stevens charged upon the Southern slaveholders 
that they were forcing a sectional issue upon the coun- 
try. If for these reasons Scott should be defeated, 
how could they expect to avoid the sectional issue in 
the coming elections ? " Do you believe that the 
North, tame as she is, when so often trod upon will 
never turn? And if the issue shall be made, the result 
can not be doubtful." 

He warned the South of the dangers of attempting 
a separate confederacy. They would be in constant 
collisions with surrounding nations; no state would 
extradite their fugitives from slavery; the sympathies 
of the world would be against them ; the dangers of 
San Domingo confronted them; and some modern 



122 THE LIFE OF THADDEUS STEVENS 

Sparticus might arise and inflict some terrible retribu- 
tion upon his former masters. " May the sound sense 
and true patriotism of the American people arrest the 
headlong career of reckless men! " 

With March 4, 1853, Stevens' second term in Con- 
gress came to an end. He retired with the expecta- 
tion of never again holding office. 1 

In the last days of the Thirty-second Congress, on 
March 3, 1853, while a naval appropriation bill was 
pending, Stevens protested against the measure, charg- 
ing that it carried money for corrupt purposes. It 
was not the time nor the hour, he said, " in the expiring 
moments of Congress, in the confusion and noise, and 
surrounded by outside pressure, to vote away your mil- 
lions," and he expressed his determination to vote 
against the bill. 

In the fall of 1851, during the recess of Congress, 
Stevens was engaged for the defense of Castner Han- 
way in the celebrated Gorsuch case, a case arising in 
Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, under the operation 
of the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, an act that was 
odious to Stevens and which he had given his best 
endeavors to defeat. Now, after the lapse of but a 
few months, he found opportunity to defend a fellow- 
citizen of his home county who had refused to help 
execute that act. Gorsuch and his son, citizens of 
Maryland, came to Lancaster County in search of two 
fugitive slaves who had escaped three years before. 

1 In a personal explanation made in the last hours of the ses- 
sion, while disclaiming any intention of disparaging the personal 
conduct of a colleague, Stevens said : " It is more than prob- 
able that hereafter I shall never meet any member here or else- 
where officially, and I desire to part with no unfriendly feeling 
toward any of them." Globe, March 3, 1853, p. 1164. 



ANTI-SLAVERY PHILIPPICS 123 

They secured from the United States Commissioner in 
Philadelphia the proper warrants for the arrest of the 
fugitives, and, with the United States Deputy Marshal, 
proceeded to break into the houses where the negroes, 
with some of their colored supporters, were concealed. 
The fugitives said they would die rather than return 
to slavery, and that if one of them were taken it would 
be only over the dead bodies of the others. Barricaded 
in the upper part of the house, the fugitives refused 
to surrender upon the demand of the officer. Instead, 
a horn was sounded as a signal to other negroes in 
the neighborhood to come to the assistance of their 
friends. /The result was that in a very short time a 
band of from fifty to one hundred negroes had 
gathered, armed with guns, clubs, axes, and corn- 
cutters, and it became obvious that it would be a dan- 
gerous proceeding for the slave-catchers to insist upon 
an arrest. Castner Hanway, a Quaker from the 
neighborhood, and another white man appeared upon 
the scene, and the officer summoned these men to as- 
sist in the arrest. They indignantly refused to do so, 
and Hanway said that " the negroes had a right to 
defend themselves." Hanway warned Gorsuch that it 
would be madness to insist upon the arrest, saying, 
"The sooner you leave the better, if you would pre- 
vent bloodshed." An angry parley followed, resulting 
in a fight. Gorsuch was killed, his son was severely 
wounded, while the others of the capturing party made 
off as best they could. 1 

This affair caused much excitement throughout the 

1 Rhodes, Hist, of the U. S., Vol. I, pp. 222-223. Harris, The 
Political Conflict in America, pp. 146-150. 



124 THE LIFE OF THADDEUS STEVENS 

country. In the South, there was exasperation, and 
the affair was cited as an illustration of the Northern 
anti-slavery resistance to the Fugitive Slave Act that 
might be expected. In Pennsylvania, some excused 
the negro rioters on the plea that a man, guilty of no 
crime, had a right to defend his liberty, Jwhile others 
demanded that the " outraged laws of the common- 
wealth should be vindicated." Hanway was indicted 
and tried for treason. The trial lasted for fifteen days 
and from the point of view of the public interest 
aroused, it was one of the most notable cases in that 
decade. Stevens was the brain of the defense in this 
trial, yet for prudential reasons, because of Stevens' 
well-known anti-slavery sentiments, John M. Read, a 
very able lawyer and afterward the Chief Justice of the 
State, became the manager for the defense. Justice 
Grier, the presiding judge in the United States Court, 
instructed the jury that the transaction did not rise 
to the dignity of treason or of levying war, and that 
there was no evidence of previous conspiracy to re- 
sist the law. Within ten minutes after the case went 
to the jury a verdict of " not guilty " was returned. 

There was a respectable body of public opinion in 
the North opposed to the enforcement of the Fugitive 
Slave Law, and while the majority would not advise 
forcible resistance to the act, the Gorsuch case, with 
others, illustrated the great difficulty of securing its 
peaceful and successful operation. Stevens was ever 
ready to use his talents and legal ability to prevent 
escaping slaves and, above all, any free negroes, from 
becoming the victims of the act. 



CHAPTER VII 

ON" THE EVE OF WAR 

AT the expiration of the Thirty-second Congress in 
March, 1853, Stevens returned to his law practise 
in Lancaster. His practise extended not only to his 
own but also to adjacent counties, and he was regarded 
by his contemporaries, who were the most competent 
to judge, as " the most accomplished all round lawyer 
in the state." 

At the opening of the Supreme Court in Pennsyl- 
vania, in 1853, Stevens gave an admirable expression 
of appreciation of a worthy judiciary. The occasion 
was his formal announcement to the court, " in brief 
and exquisite terms," as Judge Woodward afterward 
said, of the death of Chief Justice John B. Gibson. 
Gibson was for years the Nestor of the Pennsylvania 
bench and one of the great legal luminaries of his 
time. Stevens spoke of the ability, learning and im- 
partiality of this noble justice, who in 1838, in times 
of the highest and bitterest party excitement, was re- 
appointed as Chief Justice of his State by Governor 
Ritner. To make the appointment the Governor had 
to subordinate his personal and party feelings, and 
Stevens, partisan through and through, had been the 
head and front of the Governor's party. But Stev- 
ens had readily recognized the supreme propriety of 
this appointment. " It taught in significant language," 

125 



126 THE LIFE OF THADDEUS STEVENS 

said Stevens in announcing the death of Gibson, " that 
however proper it may be to fill the gubernatorial chair 
and other executive offices with politicians, none but 
able, learned and upright jurists are fit to be indued 
with judicial robes. It was an example which will be 
creditable and useful to the people and their rulers 
whenever they shall occupy a like elevated position. 
Those who believe, as all should believe, that the judi- 
ciary is the most important department of the govern- 
ment, and that great, wise and pure judges are the 
chief bulwark and protection of the lives, liberty, and 
rights of the people, will deeply and sincerely regret 
the loss of Judge Gibson." 1 

In this period of his retirement from public life 
Stevens' anti-slavery zeal was not abated. He was 
ready to help on in the agitation against the dominance 
of the country by the slave power. Oliver Johnson, 
a Peacham boy who knew Stevens' people in Vermont, 
the coadjutor and biographer of Garrison, wrote to 
him from the anti-slavery office in New York to 
invite him to give an anti-slavery lecture in that city 
in a course opened by Charles Sumner and followed 
by Joshua R. Giddings, Cassius M. Clay, Henry Ward 
Beecher, Horace Greeley and R. W. Emerson. He 
was in distinguished and honorable company, and for 
his address he was to receive twenty-five dollars and his 
expenses. Evidently, the anti-slavery cause of those 
days was promoted without much money reward or the 
hope of it. 

1 Harris' Pennsylvania State Reports, Vol. XIX, p. 10. An 
interesting portrait of Gibson in a group of Pennsylvania jus- 
tices of 1852 may be seen in the Cornell University Law Library. 



ON THE EVE OF WAR 127 

The tendency of the Whig party to compromise with 
slavery had been displeasing to Stevens, and he left 
public life, after the defeat of Scott, with but little 
disposition to take part in politics. But the repeal of 
the Missouri Compromise by the Kansas-Nebraska Act 
of 1854, bringing the threat of the extension of slavery 
to new regions in the West, aroused Stevens, as it 
did Lincoln and other anti-slavery Whigs in the North, 
to renewed interest and activity in the political struggles 
of the time. 

The movement for a new party, committed to the 
policy of resisting the further spread of slavery while 
holding in abeyance all previous political differences, 
was more progressive in the West than in the East. 
This new Republican party was getting well under way 
in Wisconsin, AficirrganT-^limors^andr Indkna_i» -the 
summer and fall of 1854. It was made up of the 
more pronounced anti-slavery Whigs, the Anti-Ne- 
braska Democrats, and the former Free-soilers who 
had already severed their party ties in order to resist 
the extension of slavery. But even in 1855 the more 
conservative spirits in the East were still holding back. 
A mass meeting was held in Lancaster in 1855 for 
the purpose of organizing the new Republican party in 
that county. The movement received but little en- 
couragement, Old-Line Whiggery and Know-Noth- 
ingism being the controlling factors in political circles 
that were not Democratic. Fewer than twenty persons 
attended this initial meeting, 1 but Stevens was one of 
these. The party was organized, and the next year p-v 
Stevens was chosen as a delegate to the first Republican 

1 McCall, pp. 93-94- 



128 THE LIFE OF THADDEUS STEVENS 

National Convention, which met at Philadelphia, June 
17, 1856. In that convention he earnestly supported 
Justice McLean in preference to General Fremont as 
a candidate for the presidency, thus showing his po- 
litical sense and acumen. He did not anticipate success 
in the election even with McLean, but with any one 
else he thought it impossible. Of his impassioned ap- 
peal to his- fellow-delegates from Pennsylvania, E. B. 
Washburne said that he had " never heard a man speak 
with more feeling or in more persuasive accents." * 
As a member of this new party, pledged to a positive 
and aggressive stand against slavery extension, Stev- /J 
ens reentered politics, and w r as again elected to the 
House of Representatives in 1858. 

Now at the age of sixty-eight, an age when most 
men are content to retire from the active and onerous 
burdens of life, Stevens was just entering upon the 
great work of his life. He was just coming to be an 
active participant in a Congress that was destined to 
confront the greatest issues that were ever presented 
to the American people, the issues of secession, dis- 
union, and civil war. .''Here was a man who was de- 
stined more than any other single man to bear the 
brunt of legislative burdens for the next ten years, and' 
that, too, in an era of great change and revolution, 
and of the fiercest combat, in which men put forth their 
greatest efforts to carry their ends. Was he con- 
scious of the paralysis of age or the impairment of 
his energies, calculated to disqualify him for the tur- 
bulent and boisterous arena of public life in which he 
was to play so important a part? Speaking at this 

1 Rhodes II, p. 183. 



ON THE EVE OF WAR 129 

time upon the death of John Sch warts, an aged col- 
league from Pennsylvania, he said, " It were perhaps 
more graceful for those who are conscious that age 
or infirmity has impaired their mental or physical 
powers, who find by repeated trials that they can no 
longer bend the bow of Ulysses, to retire, and lay 
down the discus which they have not the strength to 
hurl." * There were but few in the House who could 
appreciate with Stevens the full force of this sugges- 
tion. But events were not far distant that were to 
give him occasion to prove that his vision was un- 
dimmed and his natural force unabated. 

It is not likely that a man at such an age, when rest 
and peace are a man's chiefest desire, would care to 
endure such strife and labor as were destined to fall 
to the lot of Stevens unless he were nerved to it by 
sincere purposes and convictions, and by the desire to 
serve what he considered a great and noble cause. 

When Stevens came to Washington to take his seat 
in the House in December, 1859, he encountered a 
situation very similar to that which he had faced ten 
years before. Again the House was unable to or- 
ganize and elect a Speaker and for eight weeks there 
were strife, wrangling, and heated controversy. The 
party situation was even more complicated than that of 
ten years before and the party and sectional antago- 
nism was more bitter. There were four parties in the 
House. First, there were Republicans, with a plurality 
of the members, about one hundred and nine in all, 
with a few others of Republican leanings. Second in 
numbers, came the Democrats, whose leaders and the 
1 June 2i, i860, Globe, p. 3223. 



1 3 o THE LIFE OF THADDEUS STEVENS 

bulk of whose House members were mostly from the 
South, mustering altogether about ninety votes. 
Third, the " South Americans," or the " Southern 
Opposition," made up the next group. These were 
former " Know-Nothings " and Whigs who were op- 
posed to the Buchanan administration. There were 
from twenty-three to twenty-six of these. Lastly, 
there were the Anti-Lecompton Democrats from the 
North, — ten or twelve men who were followers of 
Douglas in opposing the Buchanan administration in 
its policy of forcing the Lecompton pro-slavery consti- 
tution on Kansas. These refused to be bound by the 
caucus action of the Democratic party. They may 
properly be called Democratic " insurgents " of the 
time. Prominent among these were Hickman, of 
Pennsylvania, and Horace F. Clark, of New York, 
who, like most of their Anti-Lecompton colleagues, 
had been elected by the aid of Republican votes. The 
great body of the Douglas Democrats in the North 
and West like George H. Pendleton and Samuel S. 
Cox, of Ohio, John A. McClernand, of Illinois, and 
Niblack and Holman, of Indiana, supported the caucus 
nominee of the Democratic party. 

On the first day of the session, Mr. Bocock, of Vir- 
ginia, was put forward as the Democratic nominee for 
Speaker. Mr. Corwin, of Ohio, nominated John Sher- 
man, of that state, while Thaddeus Stevens named 
Galusha A. Crow, of Pennsylvania. Thus, at first, 
two Republican candidates were put forward, while 
the minor parties also had their candidates. The bal- 
lot showed no choice, whereupon Mr. Clark, of Mis- 
souri, offered a resolution to the effect that, whereas 






ON THE EVE OF WAR 131 

certain members of the House now in nomination for 
the speakership had endorsed a certain book called 
The Impending Crisis of the South by one Hinton 
R. Helper, whose " doctrines are insurrectionary and 
hostile to the domestic peace and tranquillity of the 
country," therefore resolved that no member who had 
endorsed this book was " fit to be Speaker of the 
House." 

On the following day, Clark read the circular letter 
recommending Helper's book, with the names of more 
than sixty Republicans who had signed the letter, 
among them being Sherman and Crow, the Republican 
candidates for Speaker. He inserted in the record, 
also, long extracts from the objectionable book, con- 
taining what he regarded as revolutionary appeals to 
Southern non-slaveholders, and setting forth a program 
for them to follow. This program, as announced by 
Helper, recommended independent political action; no 
more voting for slaveholders ; no fellowship with them 
in politics, religion, or society; no patronage to pro- 
slavery merchants, lawyers, physicians, hotels, or news- 
papers ; in short, a union of non-slaveholders in a de- 
termined class war to the bitter end on the slaveholders 
and their system. In a speech of considerable length 
Clark sought to show that the election to the speaker- 
ship of a man who had recommended such a book 
would be but the precursor of disunion. If such senti- 
ments were to be endorsed and the endorser elevated 
to power, how, he asked, could man hope to see the 
Union continue? 

Mr. Gilmer, of North Carolina, a former Whig, now 
a " South American," moved a substitute for the Clark 



132 THE LIFE OF THADDEUS STEVENS 

resolution. This recited the facts that a great com- 
promise had been brought about in 1850; that leading 
members of Congress had recommended this com- 
promise as a " finality " and that no one should be voted 
for for President, Vice-President, Senator, Representa- 
tive or state officer, who would seek to unsettle that 
agreement; that both political parties had endorsed 
that compromise ; and therefore let it be resolved, that 
" fully endorsing these national sentiments, it is the 
duty of every good citizen of this Union to resist all 
attempts at renewing in Congress or out of it the 
slavery agitation, under whatever shape or color the 
attempt may be made." 

Later, Gilmer modified this so as to assert that no 
member should be elected Speaker whose political 
opinions were not known to conform to these senti- 
ments. 

In the guise of these resolutions offered by " mod- 
erate " men from Slave States, men who professed 
greatly to deplore " sectionalism " and " ultraism," the 
negro was thrust into the deliberations of the Thirty- 
sixth Congress in the very first days of its session. 
For eight weeks, while the House was unable to elect a 
Speaker, Congress became an arena for controversy 
and debate about slavery, abolitionism, and disunion. 
The speaking was indulged in chiefly by the South- 
ern Democrats who sought to arouse sentiment against 
the " slavery agitation " of the Republican party, and 
who were anxious to unite all parties in opposition to 
prevent the election of a Republican Speaker. On the 
first day of the session, before the flow of oratory be- 
gan, Stevens raised the point of order that there were 



ON THE EVE OF WAR 133 

but two things in order, — namely, to ballot for Speaker 
or to adjourn. But recent events, including John 
Brown's raid and the publication of Helper's book, and 
the tense political situation of the country, made it im- 
possible to restrain members from entering upon a 
heated party debate. Helper, John Brown, Seward's 
" irrepressible conflict " speech, were all made the texts 
of many speeches, delivered for the purpose of excoria- 
ting the " Black Republicans " and showing how noth- 
ing but disaster and disunion could come from 
elevating a representative of that party to the speaker- 
ship, especially if he be a " Black Republican" who 
had endorsed the infamous Helper. The Southern- 
ers wished a vote directly condemning as unfit for 
Speaker any member who had endorsed " incendiary 
sentiments calculated to stir up servile insurrection." 
They did not fancy Gilmer's substitute, which was 
calculated to divert the House from that expression. 
Millson, of Virginia, speaking for the offended honor 
and interests of the South, assumed that the Republi- 
cans should be coming forward with apologies and dis- 
claimers on account of Helper and the John Brown 
raid. He spoke with much heat, saying that the publi- 
cation and distribution of inflammatory and seditious 
writings, tending to incite the negro population of the 
Southern States to insurrection, involved very grave 
responsibilities, and that " one who had consciously, 
deliberately, and of purpose, lent his name and in- 
fluence to the propagation of such writings is not only 
not fit to be Speaker but is not fit to live." x 

Mr. Sherman who had signed the Helper circular, 
1 Globe, Dec. 6, 1859, p. 21. 






134 THE LIFE OF. THADDEUS STEVENS 

and who was now made the target of these impas- 
sioned attacks, asserted that he had not read Helper's 
book ; and having been called upon as " the abolition 
candidate for Speaker " to say whether he was opposed 
to any interference with the subject of slavery, inside 
or outside of Congress, Sherman asserted that he was 
" opposed to any interference whatever by the people of 
the Free States with the relations of master and slave in 
the Slave States." Other Republicans disavowed and 
condemned anything like an attempt on the part of the 
North to interfere with the relation between master 
and slave in the Slave States, or any effort to stir up 
insurrection and bloodshed in the South. 

But the public mind of the South was excited and 
restless and many Southern members believed that the 
North was in sympathy with, if not responsible for, 
John Brown's raid, and that the new Republican party 
had entered upon an " irrepressible conflict " to ex- 
tirpate slavery in the South, peaceably, if they could, 
but forcibly, if they must. 

These disclaimers, therefore, did not pacify Southern 
members. Keitt, of South Carolina, lashing the Re- 
publicans and charging upon them again responsibility 
for Helper and Brown, said that the South asked noth- 
ing but its rights, " but as God is my judge, I would 
shatter this republic from turret to foundation stone 
before I would take one tittle less," — at which sally 
there was enthusiastic applause in the gallery. 

After Keitt's fiery speech, Stevens rose to urge his 
point of order that the House should either vote for 
Speaker or adjourn; but before taking his seat, he 
begged to say that he did not blame the gentlemen 



ON THE EVE OF WAR 135 

from the South for the language of intimidation, for 
using " this threat of rending God's creation from the 
turret to the foundation. [Laughter.] All this is 
right in them, for they have tried it fifty times and 
fifty times they have found weak and recreant tremblers 
in the North who have been affected by it and who 
have acted from those intimidations. [Applause.] 
They are right, and I give them credit for repeating 
with grave countenances that which they have so often 
found to be effective when operating upon timid men." 

This was very provoking, but instead of leading to 
a vote and allaying the disposition to speak, it tended 
further to arouse Southern ire and threatening speech, 
as it was, perhaps, intended to do. Crawford, from 
Georgia, demanded to know whether the Black Repub- 
lican party intended to try to deceive the South by pre- 
tended friendship and by Union meetings in the North, 
and thenjwhen apprehension was removed, to renew 
their warfare on slavery. If the Northern people 
were for abolition of slavery, the South wanted no 
flinching, no lowering of the flag for the sake of policy ; 
if they would but sail under their true colors, it might 
be seen whether the South were in earnest or not. 
" All we want is a square and manly avowal of your 
sentiments that our people may not be deceived. Do 
this and my life upon it, you will see no cowardly 
shrinking upon our part from the maintenance of every 
constitutional right to which our people are entitled." 

" That is right," said Stevens, " that is the way they 
frightened us before. Now you see exactly what it is, 
and what it has always been." 

During this colloquy, members from the benches 



136 THE LIFE OF THADDEUS STEVENS 

crowded into the area, the Clerk could not maintain 
order, and there was for a time, great confusion and 
excitement in the hall. When order was restored, 
Stevens remarked, " This was but a momentary breeze, 
sir, nothing else," and insisting that no business be 
considered till the House was organized, he moved to 
adjourn. 1 

Of this incident, Morris, of Illinois, a Douglas Dem- 
ocrat, said the next day in the House, " A few more 
such scenes and we will hear the crack of the revolver 
and see the gleam of the brandished blade." He ap- 
pealed for a more conservative tone and temper. But 
Lucius O. C. Lamar, of Mississippi, later one of the 
most honored of Southern leaders, followed Morris in 
a fiery and reckless speech. He referred to the speech 
in which Millson had said that an endorser of Helper 
" was not fit to live " as an " able and solemn appeal," 
and he arraigned the Republicans for their " contemptu- 
ous silence," their " guffaws, and their uncourteous and 
indecent laughter." He charged that the Republicans 
were not " guiltless of the blood of John Brown and 
his co-conspirators and the innocent men, the victims 
of his ruthless vengeance," since Brown " had but 
crystallized the Republican idea into action." He 
charged Senator Seward with responsibility for the 
Brown raid, " the object of which was to place the 
South, a bleeding mangled victim, at the foot of North- 
ern power." He asserted that the " fathers had put 
the negro into the Constitution as an institution of 
property, of society, and of government," and when 
that Constitution is violated " I war upon your gov- 

iDec. 6, 1859, Globe. 



ON THE EVE OF WAR 137 

eminent; I am against it. I raise the banner of seces- 
sion, and I will fight under it as long as the blood flows 
and ebbs in my veins." * 

In this speech, Lamar referred to Stevens as fol- 
lows : " I almost tremble for the South when I rec- 
ollect that the opposing forces will be led by the dis- 
tinguished hero of the Buckshot War. f [Great 
laughter.] However gloomy the catastropne, his 
saltatory accomplishments will enable him to leap out 
of any difficulties in which he may be involved. I 
understand that he gave in a conspicuous way a prac- 
tical illustration of peaceable secession." This refers 
to Stevens' escape by leaping through a state-house 
window at Harrisburg during the Buckshot War. 
The day was soon to come when Stevens' leadership 
was not a matter for joke and satire to the South, — 
in the eventful years following the appeal to arms. 

Two days later, Tom Corwin, of Ohio, applied his 
wit and humor in a way calculated to bring Southern 
wrath into ridicule by saying that if the Union can be 
rent that way from turret to foundation, because a man 
from North Carolina had written a book advising a 
boycott which some members had carelessly endorsed, 
" because one man advised another not to eat his dinner 
at a particular tavern, — if it can be done that way, 
we had better go to work and pull it down ourselves 
and go home." 2 

On one of the many ballots for Speaker, some of 
the Republicans, Stevens among them, voted for Gil- 
mer, the " South American " from North Carolina, 

1 Globe, Dec. 7, 1859, pp. 44-45. 
a Globe, Dec. 8, 1859. 



138 THE LIFE OF THADDEUS STEVENS 

who on that ballot received thirty-six votes. If the 
Democrats had then transferred their votes to him, 
Gilmer could have been elected. Gilmer was an Old- 
Line Whig which some one defined as a " fossil Whig 
varnished over with Americanism." His Republican 
votes, however, tainted his candidacy; Southern Dem- 
ocrats refused pointblank to accept him because Re- 
publicans had voted for him, although Gilmer was 
recognized as a " national " man and was reputed to 
be the largest slaveholder in Congress. 

While strenuous efforts were being made to com- 
bine all the opposition to the Republicans upon Gil- 
mer, Stevens excited some amusement by saying that 
in order to avoid misapprehension he would not vote 
for Mr. Gilmer any more, which may have been inter- 
preted as an intimation that he would not have voted 
for him before if he had thought that there was any 
danger of his election. Later, Stevens solemnly rose to 
explain why, " departing from the general rule of 
obeying party decrees," he had voted for Gilmer. 
" This," he said solemnly, " requires some explanation 
as I see from a paper I send to the Clerk's desk to 
be read." " The paper is printed in German," said 
the Clerk, amid laughter, " and the Clerk pan not read 
it." " Then," said Stevens, provoking more laughter, 
" I postpone my remarks, till the Clerk can read it." 

So Stevens has very provokingly left posterity in 
doubt as to his motives in voting for a " South 
American." Most likely it was because he was con- 
vinced of the impossibility of Gilmer's election, though 
it is not impossible that it was because, since Gilmer 
had been an Old-Line Whig, it was known that he was 



ON THE EVE OF WAR 139 

sound on the tariff question. The iron interests of 
Pennsylvania and the other protected industries of that 
state, were as dear to the hearts of the Pennsylvania 
Republican delegation as was the anti-slavery cause, as 
their conduct in this speakership contest goes to show. 1 
With the Republicans the Southern Democrats 
would hold no terms, no parley. They might seek a 
combination with the Americans but before a man 
identified with the doctrines of the Helper book should 
be Speaker, they " would hold the House up till it 
expired, or till the people should rise in their wrath and 
hurl these Black Republicans from the seats of 
power." 2 Clark, of Missouri, asserted that there 
should be no vote to elect by a plurality until the House 
had expressed its opinion by a direct vote as to whe- 
ther an endorser of Helper was fit to be Speaker, — 
and he again denounced Helper's pamphlet as recom- 
mending " civil war, bloodshed, rapine, and every crime 
disgraceful to our species against the Southern peo- 
ple; whose property is sought to be taken and their 
firesides invaded " — sentiments " tending to ostracize 
and put in jeopardy the lives, liberty and safety of 
half of my constituents." 3 Avery, of Tennessee, ex- 
pressed the hope that nothing would be done to aid any 
one to shrink from the responsibility of a direct vote 
upon the Clark resolution, or to divert in any way " the 

1 See the withdrawal of votes by Morris, of Pennsylvania, and 
others from N. H. Smith, of North Carolina, after Smith had 
enough votes to elect and before the vote was announced, be- 
cause acceptable pledges could not be obtained from Smith as to 
the composition of the Ways and Means Committee of the 
House. 

2 Garnett, of Virginia, Jan. 7, 1860, Globe, p. 370. 

3 Globe, Jan. 7, i860. 



i 4 o THE LIFE OF THADDEUS STEVENS 

just lightning that was about to fall upon the guilty 
heads of those who signed the Helper book." 

It was in the midst of such per fervid speeches * 
that Mr. Anderson, of Missouri, claiming independence 
of all parties, made a " patriotic appeal " to members 
of all the parties in opposition to the Republicans to get 
together and organize the House. The members of the 
Democratic party, the American party, and the Anti- 
Lecompton party, he said, should meet together, ap- 
point a committee of three from each, and see if they 
could not agree upon some man upon whom they might 
unite as the only possible means of defeating the Re- 
publicans. 

Stevens expressed appreciation of the compromising 
proposal of the eloquent gentleman from Missouri. 
He, too, was anxious to do everything possible to or- 
ganize the House. Stevens regretted that the gentle- 
men's sweet-tempered proposition did not extend to 
his side of the House. " The gentleman," he said, 
P has realized what I thought was a myth before; that 
is, he has proposed — and I hope they may have a 
good time of it — he has proposed that happy family 
described in the Prairie, where the prairie wolf, the 
owl and the rattlesnake live in one hole. [Great 
laughter.] When they get together in this hole to- 
night I trust that there will be no biting." To show his 
own earnest desire to organize, he moved an immediate 
vive voce vote for Speaker, which was objected to on 
the Democratic side. Most of the Southern speakers 
denounced the Republican party and its doctrines as a 
menace to the Union. John H. Reagan, of Texas, in 

1 January 3, i860. 



ON THE EVE OF WAR 141 

a notable speech denounced these doctrines as " revolu- 
tionary in character, destructive of the foundations of 
the Republic, calculated to promote sectional hostilities 
and to subvert the Constitution." He charged that the 
Republicans addressed themselves to sectional interests 
and sectional motives, appealing to reckless fanatics 
and urging aggression upon the rights of the South. 
He attempted to identify the Republicans with the 
extreme abolitionists like Garrison and Phillips who 
had denounced the Constitution as " a league with hell 
and a covenant with death." " That party has en- 
dorsed a book," said Reagan, " as vile, as incendiary, 
as calumnious, as slanderous, as anything that ever 
came from Phillips or Garrison. One portion of these 
agitators call themselves Republicans, another aboli- 
tionists, but they all have the same aim, — keeping up 
anti-slavery agitation and excitement and aggression 
on the South." * 

During the long weeks of controversy, Stevens was 
not disposed to take much part. Once in a while, as 
we have seen, he briefly interjected a little ginger into 
the discussion in the form of wit and satire. What 
he said in his brief sallies tended to add fuel to the 
flames more than to pour oil on the troubled waters. 
But on January 25th, toward the close of the contest, 
he spoke more at length, partly to protest once more 
against Northern Representatives being frightened by 
Southern menaces, and partly to set forth the principles 
of the Republican party, which, as he felt, had been 
very greatly misrepresented by Southern speakers. 
He proceeded to analyze the party situation, as a means 

1 Globe, Jan. 4, i860. 



142 THE LIFE OF THADDEUS STEVENS 

of explaining why, in his judgment, the House had not 
been organized. 

First, he referred to the Democrats, " which means, 
of course, the Democrats of the South, — the others 
are mere parasites." At this, Vallandigham, of Ohio, 
interrupted and sought to prevent Stevens from speak- 
ing, but consented to waive his objection " if offensive 
language were not employed," whereupon Stevens, re- 
gretting that he could not know beforehand what Mr. 
Vallandigham would approve, substituted satellite for 
parasite, since the Northern Democrats " revolved, of 
course, around the larger body, as according to the 
laws of gravitation they must, and that is not offen- 
sive." [Laughter.] The administration Democratic 
party, according to Stevens' view, had no claim upon 
the twenty or more " South Americans," all of whom 
had been elected in direct conflict with the regular 
Democrats. With one exception, Republican princi- 
ples were almost homogeneous with those of the 
Democratic insurgents; yet Stevens found no reason 
to reproach them for not voting for a Republican for 
Speaker. 

He referred to the eight Anti-Lecompton men, not 
as a faction, as they had been called by Democratic 
speakers, but as " respectable gentlemen who would 
not agree to thrust slavery on Kansas against her 
will," and they, too, were all elected in hostility to the 
Democratic administration. What mercenary motives 
could induce them now to vote with the administration 
party? It would be a reproach to them. Many Re- 
publicans had helped to elect them to Congress, yet 
Stevens would not reproach them because they had not 



ON THE EVE OF WAR 143 

seen fit to vote for a Republican for Speaker. These 
minor parties, with the Republicans, made up one hun- 
dred and fifty members of the House. The Democrats 
numbered ninety. Now, why has the House not been 
organized ? Stevens answered this question that had 
confronted the House for weeks, as follows: 

" I have learned somewhere in the old books that 
it is lawful to learn wisdom from the enemy; but I 
never heard any wise man suggest that it was wisdom 
to accept their counsel. The distinguished gentleman 
who occupies the executive at this moment is a poli- 
tician as well as a statesman. He has long believed 
and, I doubt not, still believes, that the true way to 
aid the increase of the Democratic party North, is for 
the South to frighten them into the belief that if they 
venture to elect a Northern man with Northern prin- 
ciples, this Union is to be dissolved and all their in- 
dustrial and pecuniary interests sacrificed. I have just 
as firm a belief as that I live that this whole program 
was drawn up at the White House and is carried out 
in pursuance of the idea that the old women and the 
men in petticoats and the misers at the North are to 
be frightened." 
y Stevens then asserted that when the Democratic 
party in the North had been sufficiently strengthened 
" by this cry of ' disunion ' and the epithets of ' traitor ' 
that have been launched against this side," then the 
administration would see to it that enough Democrats 
would be ready to yield to enable the House to be 
organized and proceed to provide for the wants of the 
country. In the face of the threat that the House 
should be disorganized till 1861, and discord should 



i 4 4 THE LIFE OF THADDEUS STEVENS 

reign perpetual unless the Republicans yielded, he as- 
serted that he, for one, would stand by his cause and 
its worthy standard bearer " if the House were not 
organized till the crack of doom." He continued : 

" For many weeks past we have listened in silence 
to what, I think, may fairly be called the rantings of 
the South, filled with groundless accusations against 
the North, and threats of vengeance and dissolution of 
the Union. Sir, we listened without reply and without 
fear; for whatever effect they might once have had, 
some of us always, and all of us now, have come to 
regard them as idle menaces, as barren thunders." 

Stevens then proceeded to give " an answer, plain, 
temperate, and true," to all these allegations, by stating 
in the briefest possible manner what he considered 
the principles of the Republican party. It is doubtful 
whether there can be found in print a clearer and better 
exposition of the political principles of the Republican 
party on the eve of the Civil War. 

" I would," said Stevens, " have no man vote under 
false pretenses. In my judgment, Republicanism is 
founded in love of universal liberty, and in hostility 
to slavery and oppression throughout the world. Un- 
doubtedly, had we the legal right and the physical 
power, we would abolish human servitude and over- 
throw despotism in every land that the sun visits in 
its diurnal course. But we claim no right to interfere 
with the institutions of foreign nations, or with the 
institutions of the sister states of this republic. We 
would wish that Russia would liberate her serfs, Aus- 
tria her oppressed subjects, Turkey her minions, and 
the South her slaves. But the law of nations gives us 



ON THE EVE OF WAR 145 

no authority to redress foreign grievances, and the 
Constitution of the United States gives us no power 
to interfere with the institutions of our sister states. 
And we do deny now, as we have ever denied, that 
there is any desire or intention, on the part of the 
Republican party, to interfere with those institutions. 
It is a stern, an inflexible, a well-recognized principle 
of the Republican party, that every law must be obeyed 
till it is either repealed or becomes so intolerable as 
to justify rebellion. 

" But, sir, while we claim no power to interfere be- 
tween foreign sovereignties and their subjects, there is 
no law to prevent our sympathizing with the oppressed 
of Italy, of Turkey, or with the crushed souls of Amer- 
ica; and, as we shall ever vindicate this liberty of 
speech, no earthly power shall prevent our giving utter- 
ance to such sentiments and denouncing such wrongs 
whenever we deem it proper. Sir, while we claim no 
power to interfere with any institution in the states, yet 
where the law of no state operates, and where the re- 
sponsibility of government is thrown on Congress, we 
do claim the power to regulate and the right to abolish 
slavery. No other power on earth exists that can do 
it, for there is no other legislative body; and it would 
be an intolerable shame and reproach upon this re- 
public if there was any spot within its wide expanse 
where no such power existed. 

" Now, sir, the territories, the District of Columbia, 
the navy yards, and the arsenals have no legislative 
bodies but Congress; and it is our purpose to provide 
in the exercise of our legislative duty for preventing 
the extension of slavery into free soil under the juris- 



146 THE LIFE OF THADDEUS STEVENS 

diction of the general government, or any extension 
of slavery upon this continent. I do not in this remark 
desire to shun the question. I do not found this re- 
mark of exclusion by climate, or latitude, or soil. My 
hostility to slavery is of a higher character, I trust, 
than that. If it was not, there would be no kind of 
necessity for the existence of the Republican party at 
all. If I believed that slavery was right in itself, and 
it might be permitted in places where certain labor 
was or was not useful, I can not see what principle 
the Republican party could stand upon. 1 The whole 
ground is yielded, and this Republican party is a 
nuisance, and this agitation is a crime, in my judg- 
ment. 

" Now, sir, we agree with Clay and Webster and the 
other fathers of our earlier day, that while we have 
the power to abolish slavery in the District of Colum- 
bia, the time for its exercise is a question of expediency 
about which, I have no doubt, many men on this side 
of the House differ. I believe that most of us agree | 
that that time has not yet arrived, nor do I see the 
period, for the present, when it will; but when it can 
be safely and justly abolished it is the purpose of 
Republicanism to do so. 

" Now, sir, these are the principles of the Republican 
party. Let those who approve them aid in their prop- 
agation, — not here, for we do not propose to propa- 
gate them here, but elsewhere. Let those who 
condemn these principles oppose us. For ourselves, 

1 Corwin had said that in climes where slave labor was the 
only profitable kind that could be employed, he would admit 
the slave system. 



ON THE EVE OF WAR 147 

we have resolved to stand by them until they shall 
become triumphant; and we cheerfully submit them to 
the judgment of our fellow countrymen, to the civil- 
ized nations of the earth, and to posterity." * 

Mr. Clemens, of Virginia, commended the " frank- 
ness and manliness " of this utterance, but he wished 
to know more specifically as to the attitude of Stevens 
and his party on the Fugitive Slave Law. In reply, 
Stevens recalled his own vote in opposition to that 
law, a law which he regarded as unconstitutional ; but 
he said that he had no objection to " a fair law giving 
to the South the opportunity and the means of reclaim- 
ing their slaves," and that so long as the court decision 
holds with reference to the law of 185.0, he would not 
resist its execution. Clemens then recalled a previous 
utterance attributed to Stevens in which the latter had 
announced it as the policy of his party " to encircle 
the Slave States of this Union with Free States as a 
cordon of fire, and that then slavery like a scorpion, 
would sting itself to death." Clemens asked if Stevens 
had ever said such a thing. " If I did," said Stevens, 
" it is in the books," though it might be that the gentle- 
man from Virginia was thinking of a remark of a 
New York friend who had said that he would sur- 
round the Free States " with an atmosphere of freedom 
and that they should breathe it or die_ 1 ^_,-Clemens in- 
sisted that it was the genius^'Ci" Stevens that had 
conceived the remark, and he wished to know if it 
should ever come to pass that the Republican policy, 
as Stevens had proclaimed it, should prevail, and 
slavery were abolished in the District of Columbia, 

1 Globe, Jan. 25, i860, p. 586. 



i 4 8 THE LIFE OF THADDEUS STEVENS 

in the territories, arsenals, dockyards and forts; and 
if, in addition, that party should have the power and 
patronage of the presidency, and the prestige of the 
army and navy, — whether the condition described in 
the remark would not then be realized and slavery 
would be forced to die by its own act, like the pro- 
verbial scorpion that was forced to sting itself to 
death ? 

" I do not know, not being a prophet," retorted 
Stevens, amid laughter. 

Florence, of Penny si vania, arose to submit a question 
of figures, " because," he said, " I know my colleague 
was once a schoolmaster." " Yes," said Stevens, " I 
am proud to say that I have taught several hopeful 
boys. I wish I had taught you, too." [Laughter.] 
Florence begged to know how ninety men could or- 
ganize the House when one hundred and nineteen votes 
were required to elect the Speaker, and he referred to 
the intelligence that Stevens had pretended to have 
concerning the opinions and purposes of the White 
House. Stevens replied by saying that if a few Dem- 
ocrats would " step out some day during the voting, — 
get a little sick, or go out to get something to eat, or 
anything, — we could then elect a Speaker " ; and " as 
to my intelligence of White House affairs the gentle- 
man must remember that the President, is one of my 
constituents." [Renewed laughter.] To this, Flor- 
ence very aptly replied that " if the gentleman repre- 
sents his other constituents no better than he does the 
President, there is little hope for him." 

On the first of February, the long contest came to a 
close by the election of Mr. Pennington, of New Jersey, 



ON THE EVE OF WAR 149 

whom the Republicans substituted for Mr. Sherman as 
their candidate. Mr. Pennington was, like Mr. Cor- 
win, a conservative Old-Line Whig, who did not think 
slavery was morally wrong in itself, who as Governor 
of New Jersey had recommended the enforcement of 
the Fugitive Slave Law, and who, as Keitt, of South 
Carolina, said, was " taken up by the Republicans to 
lure over floating votes." 

After the organization of the House, Stevens be- 
came a member of the Committee on Ways and Means, 
with Mr. Sherman, of Ohio, as chairman. The rest 
of the session as far as Stevens' activities were con- 
cerned, was chiefly taken up with his work on tariff 
and appropriation bills, and with some discussion of 
contested elections. 

On the matter of contested election, he recognized the 
impossibility of the members of the House wading 
through the testimony and passing judicially upon a 
case. Therefore, members could act only on the find- 
ings of the committee appointed to investigate. The 
finding of a partisan House was apt to be partisan. 
He considered it a great misfortune that Congress had 
not adopted the system of Great Britain, that of having 
a judicial determination of such cases, permitting a 
decision to be final when made by a judicial committee 
sworn to try the case on the law and the evidence. 
This had worked well in Great Britain and in some 
of the states and would tend to avoid partisan un- 
fairness. 1 

1 June 8, i860, Globe, p. 2766. This enlightened and liberal 
view does not harmonize with Stevens' later partisan disposition 
in contested election cases. It is reported that upon coming 
into the House one day he found a vote in progress upon an 



150 THE LIFE OF THADDEUS STEVENS 

It is not necessary to go at any length into Stevens' 
repeated pleas for a protective tariff. Nothing new 
could be offered upon the subject, but the old argu- 
ments were repeatedly brought to the attention of the 
House and the country with great effect by Stevens. 
He had great interest in the protective cause and deep 
convictions as to its wisdom. He held that the ar- 
gument for free trade was always metaphysical, that 
for protection always practical. He insisted that no 
nation would ever reduce free trade to practise until all 
nations were of one size, one wealth, one skill, one 
capital. England had still continued protection after 
her corn laws were repealed, because that repeal gave 
her cheaper food ; and cheaper food was the only advan- 
tage that American manufacturers had ever had over 
the English. So, also, the English export duty on coal 
had a protective effect, because it forced her neighbors, 
like France, to pay more for fuel and to that extent 
gave the English manufacturer the advantage. Ste- 
vens believed it to be the true policy of every nation 
to take care of her own people in preference to the 
people of foreign countries; to foster and promote 
domestic industries and thus give employment to labor. 
His motive was to protect the labor of the country 
and let the idle have a better opportunity to work. 
He would not mince matters by declaring himself for 
a tariff " with incidental protection." The bill before 
the House was nothing more, and Stevens asserted 
that if it were not for the clause repealing the ware- 
election case, and when he inquired as to the merits of the con- 
testants he was told that they were both " damned rascals." 
"Well," said Stevens, "which is our damned rascal?" Ac- 
cordingly, he voted for his own party rascal. 



ON THE EVE OF WAR 151 

house system, he would not support it. 1 " This is not 
a tariff for protection," said Stevens, " such as America 
ought to have; but it is the best we can get in these 
degenerate days." It was his desire to pay laborers at 
home instead of sending the money across the water to 
pay the laborers and keep up the workshops of Europe. 

The House passed the revised tariff bill which was 
slightly more favorable to protection than the tariff 
then in operation, but by the action of the Senate, the 
bill, which was to be known as the Morrill Act, went 
over to the next session. 

Before the Thirty-sixth Congress came together for 
its second session, the country had passed through one 
of the most exciting presidential contests in its history. 
Stevens, as one of the delegates from Pennsylvania, 
attended the National Convention in Chicago in which 
Lincoln was nominated. As in 1856, he again pre- 
ferred Judge McLean as the candidate of his party, 
though his state delegation supported Simon Cameron, 
whom he disliked. The Pennsylvania delegation 
finally came to the support of Lincoln in preference to 
Seward, and Stevens voted for Lincoln on the decisive 
ballot. Now that the Black Republican party had 
succeeded in electing a President, it remained to be seen 
what effect that event would have on the continuance 
of the Union. 

1 The warehouse system provided that foreigners, when there 
was slack demand for the supply of goods which they had at 
home, might send their goods here and put them in warehouses 
where they could lie three years without paying duty. If they 
kept them there till the market rose, then they could have the 
articles in market before Americans could be ready to com- 
pete. 






CHAPTER VIII 

DISUNION, SECESSION, AND NO COMPROMISE 

THE issue upon which Mr. Lincoln was elected to 
the presidency in i860 was the restriction of slav- 
ery by national authority to the area of the Slave States. 
As Lincoln himself had expressed it, the question was 
who shall control the national government? Shall it 
be controlled by those who believe that slavery is right 
and ought to be extended, or by those who believe that 
slavery is wrong and ought to be restricted? In the 
minds of some men there were other interests ; there 
may have been side issues, eddies, and counter currents, 
but in this statement of Lincoln is found the gist of 
the great controversy. 

But upon that simple issue thus so clearly stated, 
the people of the Free States were by no means united. 
To thousands of Northern people who loved the Union 
of their fathers, the anti-slavery agitation had been 
only a hateful source of discord and disunion. Its 
very existence endangered the Union. The Pennsyl- 
vanian who was then President of the United States 
felt, as he said in his last annual message, that the 
continued interference of the Northern people with the 
question of slavery had at last produced its natural 
results in disunion. Buchanan saw no blame for the 
then sad condition of the country except in the " fell 
spirit of fanaticism " as represented in the anti-slavery 

152 



DISUNION AND NO COMPROMISE 153 

agitation. Hundreds of thousands of voters in the 
North felt that the Union and the anti-slavery cause 
could not abide together. They looked upon the Re- 
publican party as a sectional party that was disturbing 
the peace of the country and threatening the Union. 
They rather sympathized with the Southerners whom 
they considered to be attacked unfairly, while the 
Southerners themselves, unable to distinguish between 
abolitionists and anti-slavery men, looked upon Lincoln 
and his party as hostile to their section, and gave him 
no votes worth speaking of. Consequently as the re- 
sult of the voting in i860, the Electoral College pre- 
sented the country with a President who was the choice 
of only a popular minority in the states. A million 
more votes had been cast against Lincoln than had 
been cast for him. Even in the states of the solid 
North, whose electoral votes he carried, Lincoln's pop- 
ular majority against the combined opposition was 
very meager. 1 There were almost as many against him 
as were for him. And many thousands of those who 
had voted for Lincoln did so in the feeling that the 
cry of disunion was but an idle threat, a cry of 
"Wolf!" to frighten the country, a false alarm to 
deter men from voting their convictions on a national 
policy as to slavery. 

When, therefore, as the immediate result of Lin- 
coln's election, the secession of the cotton states went 
on apace and the Southern Confederacy was formed, 
and it was seen that the Union was dissolving and the 
clouds of war were lowering over the land, many of 
the men who had voted for Lincoln were affrighted at 

1 About 230,000 in all the Northern States. 



154 THE LIFE OF THADDEUS STEVENS 

what they had done. They would gladly have recalled 
their ballots and would have made such concessions to 
the South and given consent to such adjustment and 
compromises as would have guaranteed immunity and 
perpetuity to slavery. Whatever concession was found 
necessary to save the Union, that concession should 
be made, and the disunion seceders themselves were to 
be the judges of the necessity. 

One of the most astounding revelations in our history 
is the wo ful lack of national spirit and purpose, the 
state of quaking panic and fear, which seemed to 
prostrate the country before the determined and mili- 
tant spirit of the South in the secession movement. 
Our thirteenth amendment, decreeing that there should 
be no slavery within the United States nor in any place 
subject to their jurisdiction, was hailed upon its pas- 
sage as " an immortal and sublime event." But the 
thirteenth amendment assented to in 1861, proposed as 
a compromising means of saving the Union and passed 
by two-thirds of the members of the national Congress, 
was an event of quite a different hue. It proposed 
to make slavery perpetual, beyond the power of the 
nation to repeal or to recall. The feeling seemed to 
be very general with the country that the dissolution 
of the Union would be the greatest calamity that could 
befall civilization in America. " Rather than that," 
exclaimed Charles Francis Adams, " let the heavens 
fall ! To prevent that, let every other cause be sacri- 
ficed. " 

It was this feeling that was behind all these vain 
and in some respects humiliating efforts at compromise. 
It was the conviction that the Union must be saved and 



DISUNION AND NO COMPROMISE 155 

that it could not be saved by a resort to force, but only 
by the free consent of the individual states. A resort 
to the sword seemed like madness. Senator Stephen 
A. Douglas, who sought to keep his finger on the public 
pulse as much as any man in public life, said in the 
Senate, February 21, 1861, "I have too much respect 
for the intelligence of Senators to believe for one 
moment that they hope to preserve the Union by mili- 
tary force. A peaceful settlement is a perpetuation of 
the Union. The use of the sword is war, disunion, 
and separation, now and forever." Wendell Phillips 
had said that the South had a perfect right to form 
an independent government of its own if it chose, 
while Horace Greeley in his historic editorial in the 
New York Tribune in November, i860, under the 
caption, " Let the Erring Sisters Depart in Peace," 
gave a piece of counsel to his country from a powerful 
organ of public opinion that to-day must seem only 
like a veritable curiosity. If such things could come 
from the anti-slavery prophets on the platform and in 
the sanctum, what could be expected from common 
men in the marts of trade or from the time-servers in 
the halls of legislation? 

Such utterances serve to illustrate the temper of the 
times. They were times of indecision and uncertainty, 
of doubt and dismay. Men hesitated and were afraid, 
and amid the multitude of counselors the dominant 
note seemed to be that the anti-slavery case that had 
been won after so many hard years of struggle should 
be yielded for the sake of peace. Charles Francis 
Adams had been the candidate of the Free-soil party 
for Vice-President in 1848, a party that had been re- 



156 THE LIFE OF THADDEUS STEVENS 

garded as radical and positive in its anti-slavery pro- 
gram. It was no other anti-slavery apostle than he 
who now proposed the amendment perpetuating slav- 
ery. He proposed that no future amendment propos- 
ing any interference with slavery " shall originate with 
any state that does not recognize that relation within 
its limits, or shall be valid without the assent of every 
one of the states composing the Union." "This," 
says Mr. McCall, "would have effectually postponed 
until the millennium the peaceful abolition of slavery 
under law." 

Yet this proposal received nearly the unanimous 
support of the committee of thirty-three appointed 
by the House to consider plans of compromise and 
conciliation. Hardly a proposition was made in favor 
of slavery that the committee was not ready to en- 
dorse. Its report called for the enactment of Mr. 
Adams' " amendment," the repeal of the personal lib- 
erty laws in the Free States; the admission of New 
Mexico with its slave laws ; the amendment of the Fugi- 
tive Slave Law so that a person who was seized by a 
claimant should have his right to freedom tried by a 
jury, not in a Free State where he was seized, and of 
which he might have been for years a citizen, but in the 
Slave State to which he was carried. 

The compromise proposals made in the Senate were 
of the same tenor. The plan proposed by Senator 
Crittenden, of Kentucky, known as the " Crittenden 
Compromise " was the most prominent and compre- 
hensive, involving, among other things, the extension 
of the Missouri line of 36 30' to the Pacific and 
the national guarantee and protection of slavery south 



DISUNION AND NO COMPROMISE 157 

of that line; that further guarantees should be given 
concerning the return of fugitive slaves; that 
Congress should not interfere with the interstate 
slave-trade, nor abolish slavery in the District of Co- 
lumbia so long as the institution existed in Virginia 
and Maryland ; and, finally, that no future amendment 
to the Constitution should ever affect the three-fifths 
allowance of slaves in Southern representation, or the 
clause for the rendition of fugitive slaves, nor permit 
Congress ever to interfere with slavery in the states. 

Buchanan in his weak and vacillating message had 
sought to demonstrate several distinct propositions : 
that the anti-slavery men were entirely to blame for 
the crisis ; that South Carolina had a just provocation ; 
that she had no constitutional right to secede, but that 
if she did secede there was no power in the national 
government to prevent it. 1 A state of mind like that 
on the part of those in the seats of power would allow 
the Union to dissolve by inanition. It had been sup- 
posed that Lincoln's triumph had been the triumph of 
freedom, that he had been elected to oppose slavery in 
its advance across the continent. It was thought the 
nation had determined to tread again the old landmarks, 
— in the footsteps of Washington, of Jefferson and 
of Mason, — the great Virginians who had in their 
day hoped to prevent the spread of slavery and to 
place it in the course of ultimate extinction. Were 
such humiliating concessions — they could not be 
called compromises — was this surrender to Southern 

1 Seward satirized this attitude by saying that it held sub- 
stantially that " a state had no right to secede unless it wished 
to and that the government must save the Union unless some- 
body opposes it." 



I. 
V 



158 THE LIFE OF THADDEUS STEVENS 

demands for slavery extension to be the result of the 
national verdict against slavery, merely because a few 
Southern States had passed so-called ordinances of se- 
cession? 

It was most fortunate for America that a leader had 
been chosen to the presidency who had the sagacity to 
understand and the courage to speak the truth that 
the people then needed most to hear. Lincoln's vision 
was clear and his purpose unhesitating upon the vital 
issue. On the point of extending slavery he was in- 
flexible, as firm as a chain of steel. " I am for no 
compromise," he said, " which assists or permits the 
extension of slavery on soil owned by the nation." 
He asserted that the instant such a compromise were 
agreed to, " they have us under again. All our labor 
is lost, and sooner or later, must be done over. The 
tug has to come, and better now than later. . . . Any 
trick by which the nation is to acquire territory and 
then allow some local authority to spread slavery over 
it is as obnoxious as any other. To effect some such 
result as this is the object of all these proposed com- 
promises." 

This expressed precisely the state of mind of Stevens 
upon the proposal to surrender the paramount issue 
in order to conciliate the South. When one reads the 
proposed concessions offered to the South, like tearful 
pleadings to recall the wayward sisters from their illegal 
course of secession and dismemberment, one feels that 
the need of the nation and of the hour was men, men 
of convictions, men of nerves and spines, such men as 
Oliver Cromwell or Andrew Jackson. The hour 
needed steady men. with vision clear enough to see 



i 



DISUNION AND NO COMPROMISE. 159 

that the South was not to be placated by compromise, 
men who knew the South well enough to know that the 
only concession that would satisfy the aggressive 
leaders of the Slave States involved the complete sur- 
render of the free-soil principle on which the nation 
had just elected to live. 

There were a few such men in the Congress of the 
United States, and the boldest and ablest of all was 
Thaddeus Stevens. The attitude of Buchanan, marked 
by indecision and fear, and offering official apologies 
for secession, was like gall and wormwood to Stevens. 
He had a stout heart and he was not disposed to 
shrink in the face of danger, but rather to stand his 
ground and fight for his cause. He heartily disliked 
Buchanan, whom he looked upon as a doctrinaire and 
nerveless dotard whose presidency at this crisis was 
nothing short of a calamity to his country. He was 
disposed to look upon the presidential office as vacant 
while James Buchanan was drawing the salary. He 
would give forth no uncertain sound. It is, therefore, 
something of a relief, like a breath of fresh air in an 
atmosphere of depression, in those days of weakness 
and surrender, of hesitation and doubt and compro- 
mise, when many of his weak-kneed colleagues were 
ready to throw over the very cause for which they had 
won their political victory, — it is a relief to read such 
bold and ringing utterances for the vindication of the 
national authority as Stevens gave forth. \ A few years 
later it was easy to see that the times called for just 
such a type of leader. But it was only in the retrospect 
that the great indecisive majority, looking back on 
those times that tried the fibers of men, could applaud 



i Go THE LIFE OF THADDEUS STEVENS 

the sentiment that Stevens then uttered when he ex- 
claimed, " Oh ! for an hour of Andrew Jackson ! " 

Stevens believed that if a state had no power to 
secede, then the nation had a right to its remaining in 
the Union, and if the nation had this right then it 
must have the power to defend it. On December 31, 
i860, he introduced a resolution calling upon Buchanan 
to inform the House as to the situation of the forts, 
arsenals and public property about Charleston. He 
desired that the administration should not hesitate to 
defend this property. Stevens was ready to live up 
to the compromises of the Constitution as they had 
been originally made and to abide by the compromises 
on slavery that had been made since the Constitution 
had gone into operation. But he believed that the time 
for compromise and conciliation had gone by. He saw 
no spirit of concession and conciliation in the Southern 
leaders, and he had no patience whatever with the 
weak, do-nothing character of President Buchanan's 
message ; and when a routine motion was made that so 
much of the President's message as relates to the 
present perilous condition of the country be referred 
to a special committee of thirty-three, one from each 
state, Stevens voted against it. The futility of 
further compromise was obvious to him. He held that 
negotiation was ended by the solemn declaration of 
the seceding party that they will not listen to conces- 
sion or compromise. He called the committee of 
thirty-three the " Committee on Incubation." " This 
committee," says Mr. Blaine, " arrived at a series of 
conclusions which tended only to lower the tone of 
Northern opinion without in any degree appeasing the 



DISUNION AND NO COMPROMISE 161 

wrath of the South. The record of the committee is 
one which can not be reviewed with pride or satisfac- 
tion by any citizen of a loyal state. Every form of 
compromise which could be suggested, every conces- 
sion of Northern prejudice and every surrender of 
Northern pride, was urged upon the committee." 

Stevens would have no part nor lot in any such 
work. To him it was all a craven-hearted or chicken- 
hearted procedure. When the report of the committee 
came in, he spoke with vigor in denunciation of it. 
He characterized the report, which assumed to give an 
estimate of Southern grievances, as a delicate bit of 
satire. He felt that the only manly way to meet the 
South in the crisis was in the same spirit of resolute 
purpose and determination that the Southern leaders 
themselves had shown. And the sequel shows that 
he knew better than his colleagues the temper of the 
South. " No compromise," he said, " can be made 
which will have any effect in averting the present diffi- 
culty. I regret the fact. But when I see these states 
in open rebellion, seizing forts, arsenals and millions 
of public property, when I see the batteries of seceding 
states blockading the highways of the nation and their 
armies in battle array against the flag of the Union; 
when I see our flag insulted and that insult submitted 
to, I have no hope that concession, humiliation, and 
compromise can have any effect whatever." l 

News from the South confirmed this conviction of 
Stevens. A Virginia embassy had gone to South 
Carolina for the purpose of inducing that state to ap- 
point commissioners to propose amendments to the 
1 Jan. 29, i86r, Globe, p. 621. 



i62 THE LIFE OF THADDEUS STEVENS 

United States Constitution in order to retain South 
Carolina within the Union and to secure her rights. 
South Carolina peremptorily refused to appoint such 
commissioners. She formally resolved, in answer to 
the Virginia embassy, that her separation was final; 
that she had no further interest in the Constitution of 
the United States, and that she would negotiate with 
the United States only as a foreign power. 

Under such conditions Stevens thought that homilies 
upon the Union and jeremiads over its destruction 
could be of no use except to display fine rhetoric and 
eloquence. He was convinced that the Southern 
States would not be turned from their deliberate and 
stern purpose by soft words and touching lamentations. 
It would do them no credit ; in that case condemnation 
of them would degenerate into contempt. 

Stevens denounced Buchanan's message as contain- 
ing- some wholesome truths mixed with atrocious 
calumnies. He denied what Buchanan affirmed, that 
Northern interference with slavery was responsible for 
disunion. " The President knew," said Stevens, " that 
the anti-slavery party of the North never interfered, 
or claimed the right to interfere, or expressed a desire 
to intermeddle with slavery in the states." Stevens 
denounced Buchanan, because after denouncing seces- 
sion as a great wrong he had come to the impotent con- 
clusion that there is no power in the government to 
prevent or punish it. He thought it was time this 
question were solved, time to decide whether this 
Union exists by the sufferance of individual states. 
Tf it should be determined that secession is a rightful 
act or there is no power to prevent it. then the Union 



DISUNION AND NO COMPROMISE 16 



o 



is not worth preserving for a single day. Whatever 
disposition we may make of the present difficulty, 
fancied wrong will constantly arise and induce state 
after state to withdraw from the confederacy. If, 
on the other hand, it should be decided that we are one 
people and the government possesses sufficient power 
to coerce obedience, the public mind will be quieted, 
plotters of disunion will be regarded as traitors, and 
we shall long remain a happy and united people. 

It will be seen that Stevens was not disposed to 
resort to soft words as a means of turning away South- 
ern wrath. He was accustomed rather to defy that 
wrath and to stir it to hotter flame. ' The real ag- 
gression," he said, " which one of the states frankly 
assigns as the reason of secession, is that the North 
has taken from them the power of government which 
they have held so long. They have elected the man 
of their choice President of the United States. The 
American people have used no violence or malpractise, 
but they have dared to disobey the commands of slav- 
ery, and this is proclaimed as just cause for secession 
and civil war. Can not the people of the United States 
elect whom they will for President without stirring 
up rebellion and requiring humiliating concessions to 
appease the insurgents? I would take no steps to 
propitiate such a feeling. Rather than show repent- 
ance for the election of Mr. Lincoln with all its con- 
sequences I would see this government crumble into 
a thousand atoms. If I can not be a freeman let me / 
cease to exist. "\ 

It was in this spirit that Stevens faced the crisis of 
disunion and secession. Stevens, in common with the 



164 THE LIFE OF THADDEUS STEVENS 

great majority of his countrymen at this time, did not 
believe there would be a serious struggle. He would 
reduce South Carolina by peaceful means. He would 
send no armies there to wage war. But he would an- 
nul all postal laws within her territory and stop the 
mails at the border of the state; he would abolish 
all laws establishing ports of entry and collection dis- 
tricts within the state and prevent all vessel c . foreign 
or domestic, from entering or leaving any of her ports. 
She could not then send her cotton or her surplus 
products abroad. No vessel could load within her 
harbors; she would be without officers to give her a 
clearance, without papers, without nationality, and she 
would be a prize to the first captors. Southern sea- 
ports would then be a barren waste, without commerce, 
and without industry. 

Stevens had no sympathy with the impulsive emo- 
tional sentiment of letting " the erring sisters go in 
peace." " Those who counsel the government," he 
said, " to let them go and destroy the national Union 
are preaching moral treason. I can understand such 
doctrine from those who conscientiously dislike a part- 
nership in slaveholding, who desire to see this em- 
pire severed along the black line so they could live in 
a free republic." Such might have been the voice of 
Garrison and the radical abolitionists, but it was not 
the voice nor temper of Stevens. 

It was often said in the beginnings of secession that 
it was the purpose of the Southern leaders to take their 
states out of the Union as a means of imposing con- 
ditions, — in the belief that better terms could be made 
out of the Union than in it. They would then come 



DISUNION AND NO COMPROMISE 165 

back masters of the situation. Stevens warned the 
South against this error, a warning to which subse- 
quent years added a forceful emphasis. 

" Let no Slave State flatter itself that it can dissolve 
the Union now and then reconstruct it upon better 
terms. The present Constitution was formed in our 
weakness. Some of its compromises were odious and 
have become more so by the unexpected increase of 
slaves. Now in our strength the conscience of the 
North would not allow them to enter into such a part- 
nership with slavery. If this Union should be dis- 
solved its reconstruction would embrace one empire 
wholly slave and one republic wholly free. While we 
will religiously observe the present compact nor at- 
tempt to be absolved from it, yet if it should be torn to 
pieces by rebels our next United States will contain 
no foot of ground on which a slave can tread, no 
breath of air which a slave can breathe. Then we can 
boast of liberty. Then we can rise and expand to 
the full stature of untrammeled freemen and hope 
for God's blessing. Then the bondmen who break 
their chain will find a city of refuge." 

Stevens held that the pretexts used to justify se- 
cession were trivial. The Fugitive Slave Law was gen- 
erally executed; its violation was the exception. 
Southern people could visit the North freely and in 
safety and enjoy full liberty to defend and propagate 
the doctrine of slavery. On the other hand, for 
twenty years it had been unsafe for Northern men to 
travel or settle in the South " unless they would avow 
their belief that slavery was a good institution." 
" They can not expect," he said, " to make us love 



if>6 THE LIFE OF THADDEUS STEVENS 

slavery or withhold the utterance of our just abhor- 
rence of it. They can not hope to make the honest 
masses of the people adopt the blasphemy of some of 
their clergymen and call it a divine institution. They 
have too much respect for their temporal character and 
their eternal salvation." 1 

Stevens' purpose was to administer a tonic, to brace 
his colleagues and the country to resist cowardly 
counsels calculated to unnerve the people. He was 
reminded that his language was not that of Penn- 
sylvania as represented by the united voice of her 
two Senators. He denied that the Senators repre- 
sented the principles of the people of his state. 
" Pennsylvania would go, as I would," he said, " to 
the verge of the Constitution and of her principles 
to maintain peace. But it is a libel on the good name 
of her virtuous people to say that she would sacrifice 
her principles to obtain the favor of rebels. I be- 
lieve it to be a libel on her manhood to say that she 
will purchase peace by concessions to insurgents with 
arms in their hands. If I thought such was her char- 
acter, I would expatriate myself. I would leave the 
land where I have spent my life from early manhood 
to declining age and would seek some spot untainted 
by the coward breath of servility and meanness." 

It was the guns at Sumter that aroused the people 
of the North from their fear. When the flag of the 
Union was fired on at Sumter, the latent national 
spirit in the North seemed to find expression. The 
lowering of the flag before hostile guns raised a new 
issue. It was not now a question whether slavery 

1 Globe, Jan. 29, 1861. 



DISUNION AND NO COMPROMISE 16/ 

should be extended or the South conciliated. It was 
now a question of national unity and the enforcement 
of the national authority against secession and dis- 
memberment. Upon that issue the North united. 

No public man of the time recognized more clearly 
than Stevens that the country was in the greatest 
danger that it had faced since the inauguration of 
Washington. He also recognized that the virtue most 
needed in such a time of peril was " courage, calm un- 
wavering courage, — a courage which no danger could 
appall." l Amid the trials and doubts and darkness of 
the great civil struggle upon which the country had 
entered Stevens more than any other man in the halls of 
Congress exemplified in his course the prime quality 
most needed in such a period, — unhesitating political 
courage. 

1 Speech in House of Representatives, January 29, 1861. 



CHAPTER IX 

SLAVERY AND THE WAR 

T INCOLN'S election had been carried upon the re- 
-■— ' striction of slavery. His first purpose on coming 
into power was the restriction of secession. It was 
clearly wise for him to recognize the obvious fact, — 
that the Union cause was much stronger than the 
anti-slavery cause. There were still thousands of 
Union men, especially in the Border States, as well 
as among Mr. Lincoln's party opponents in the North, 
in whose opinions the anti-slavery agitation was the 
cause that had produced disunion and war; to whom 
"coercion" was odious; who thought that military 
force as a means of holding the states together was 
not only useless but pernicious; who believed, or pro- 
fessed to believe, that the national authority could 
never be successfully asserted by the bayonet and the 
sword against such a powerful revolution as that rep- 
resented by the Confederated Slave States; that com- 
promise and conciliation were still the only hope of the 
Union. Some of this unionism may have been mere 
pretense, — a mere cloak to cover purposes of aid and 
comfort to the secessionists of the South. Some of 
it certainly was pretty weak and unstable. But what- 
ever of weight there was in it Lincoln wished to make 
use of against the cause of secession. He would bring 
every possible man, every ounce of opinion, to the sup- 

168 



SLAVERY AND THE WAR 169 

port of the Union. To this end he was ready to hold 
in check anti-slavery purposes and tendencies. His 
I first desire was to unite the North, divide the South, 
save the Border States, and preserve the Union. 

For this reason Mr. Lincoln's inaugural address was 
quite conciliatory in its attitude toward slavery and the 
; South. He called attention to the fact that the plat- 
; form of his party committed him both to "the 
! preservation of the Union and the maintenance of the 
right of each state to order and control its own do- 
mestic institutions according to its own judgment." 
J He reiterated this sentiment of his party platform, and 
quoting one of his former speeches he said, " I have 
no purpose either directly or indirectly to interfere 
with the institution of slavery in the states where it 
exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, 
and I have no inclination to do so." Lincoln thus 
sought with earnest purpose to convince the South 
that his intentions were not hostile, and that the in- 
stitution of slavery had no cause to fear interference 
from the executive authority of the nation. 

His efforts were in vain. The South believed that 
the dominance of a party that was anti-slavery in its 
antecedents and purposes, under the administration of 
a leader who had declared that the Union could not ex- 
ist " half slave and half free," meant the ultimate 
doom of slavery. No doubt they were right in this 
opinion. If slavery were prevented from extending it 
would be " placed in the course of ultimate extinction." 
The tree of slavery would be girdled and left to die. 
Time, public opinion, material interests, would have 
made slavery impossible within another generation. 



lyo THE LIFE OF THADDEUS STEVENS 

But the South was wrong in supposing that there was 
any purpose of political interference with slavery in 
the states on the part either of Mr. Lincoln or of his 
party. As Thaddeus Stevens later said, when Sumter 
was fired on there were probably not three thousand 
abolitionists in the whole country who were disposed to , 
disregard the Constitution or violate interstate comity 
in order to destroy Southern slavery. But the South 
seceded to escape from a government that they thought 
was hostile, and to form a government that they 
thought would be friendly to that institution. In this 
feeling and action there were many men in the North 
who felt that the South had, if not justification, at least 
serious provocation, and that the Southern States 
ought to be given ample assurance within the Union, 
even more than they already had, that Southern slav- 
ery would never be endangered from Northern aggres- 
\ sion. 

' On these issues there were political divisions in the 
North. The bombardment of Sumter wrought a 
change. All parties then merged, in the great national 
uprising, into the party of the Union. Controversies 
over abolitionism and slavery ceased. The voice of 
faction and party contention was stilled, and the leaders 
of all parties called upon their followers to rally round 
the flag and to stand for the Union and the integrity 
of their nation. The people responded with practical 
unanimity. They rallied to the support of the gov- 
ernment, not to prevent the spread of slavery, nor to 
interfere with slavery in the states, — a proposal which 
all parties since the foundation of the government had 
recognized as being beyond the limits of the Consti- 



SLAVERY AND THE WAR 171 

tution, — but to save the Union and the Constitution 
of their fathers. 

This primary purpose was clearly expressed by Con- 
gress at the opening of the war. In the famous Crit- 
tenden Resolutions of July 22, 1861, immediately after 
the battle of Bull Run, Congress gave official defini- 
tion to the object of the war. These resolutions 
recited, in substance, that the war was prosecuted on 
the part of the national government not to conquer or 
subjugate the Southern States, that is, not to reduce 
them to provinces, nor to interfere with slavery in 
those states; but to preserve the Union and to defend 
and maintain the Constitution and the laws, " with all 
the dignity, equality, and rights of the several states 
unimpaired, and that as soon as these objects are 
accomplished the war ought to cease." x The evidence 
is conclusive that it was not the original purpose of the 
nation in the Civil War to interfere with slavery. If 
it had been but a hundred days' war it would prob- 
ably have ended with slavery intact. There is no doubt 
but that the Crittenden Resolutions, at the time they 
were offered, voiced the public opinion of the country 
and almost the unanimous opinion of the Republican 
party. President Lincoln accepted this policy and was 
ready to make it his own. In a conservative spirit 
he attempted at first to conduct the war without inter- 
fering with slavery, on the assumption that the status 
of the states and their relation to the Union had not 
changed. 

But there were a few men in the country — probably 
one in ten thousand — of the more pronounced and 
1 Congressional Globe, July 22, 1861. 



172 THE LIFE OF THADDEUS STEVENS 

radical anti-slavery type, who believed at the outset 
that the Rebellion must result in the destruction of 
slavery. Stevens was one of these. He had opinions 
of his own, with no disposition to wait upon a conven- 
tional majority. When the Crittenden Resolutions 
were offered, he objected to them and withheld his vote. 
He was one of four in the House who were not ready to 
subscribe to its doctrines. He would not embarrass 
the government nor prevent its dealing a blow in op- 
position to slavery when occasion should arise. He 
wished the government to have a free hand, an un- 
restricted liberty in the conduct of the war, and he 
did not wish Congress to commit the country to a doc- 
trine from which, as he believed, it would soon have 
to recede. He believed at the start what Lincoln came 
to believe later in the war, that in such a crisis, Con- 
gress and the President, representing a sovereign na- 
tion in the conduct of war, had a right to take " any 
steps which might best subdue the enemy." * 

Time was soon to vindicate Stevens' opinion in re- 
spect to the effect of the war upon the attitude of the 
government toward slavery. A few short months of 
war made all the difference in the world and wrought 
a decided change in the purpose and temper of Con- 
gress and the country. It was seen that slavery was 
a source of strength to the Rebellion. Conservative 
Union men were being rapidly and radically convinced 
that if the national government did not interfere with 
slavery, slavery would seriously interfere with the na- 
tional government, and the success of its arms. This 
change in policy and purpose is indicated by the fact 
1 Life and Writings of B. R. Curtis, I, p. 348. 



SLAVERY AND THE WAR 173 

that when the Thirty-seventh Congress came together 
again in its regular session in December, 1861, and an 
attempt was made to reaffirm the Crittenden Resolu- 
tions, which had received such universal approval but a 
few months before, they were decisively rejected. 
They were rejected by a party vote upon the motion of 
Stevens, who had thus considerable satisfaction in see- 
ing that at least his own party had now come to his 
position in asserting its freedom from a doctrinaire im- 
pediment to the conduct of the war, and that the nation 
was now to feel free to strike at slavery, or to do what- 
ever else might seem best calculated to promote the suc- 
cess of the national cause. 

A fortnight had not gone by after the Crittenden 
Resolutions were offered, defining the objects of the 
war and giving an implied promise that slavery would 
not be interfered with, before slavery had become a 
subject of sore discussion in Congress. It came up 
in connection with the first Confiscation Act of August 
3, 1 86 1. To this measure Stevens gave his earnest 
support. This was the beginning of war legislation 
concerning slavery. It aroused opposition, because a 
section of the law required that owners should forfeit 
the slaves whom they allowed to be used in arms 
against the United States or to labor in forts or in- 
trenchments, or whom they should employ in any naval 
or military capacity against the national government. 

In the debate on confiscation, August 2, 1861, Stev- 
ens voiced his deep opposition to slavery and his pur- 
pose to strike at that institution whenever occasion 
offered. He said : " God forbid that I should ever 
agree that the slaves should be returned again to their 



174 THE LIFE OF THADDEUS STEVENS 

masters and that you should rivet again the chains 
which you have once broken. I do not say that this 
war is made for that purpose. Ask those who made 
the war what its object is. Do not ask us. I did not 
like the Crittenden Resolutions because they looked like 
an apology from us in saying what were the objects 
of the war. Those who made the war should explain 
its objects. Our object is to subdue the rebels." 

In this first discussion of the war touching slavery, 
Stevens predicted the arming of the blacks in defense 
of the Union. 

" If this war continues and is bloody," he said, " I 
do not believe that the free people of the North will 
stand by and see their sons and neighbors slaughtered 
by thousands and tens of thousands by rebels with 
arms in their hands, and forbear to call their enemies 
to be our friends. I for one shall be ready to go for 
it — arming the blacks — horrifying to gentlemen as 
it may appear. That is my doctrine and that will be 
the doctrine of the whole people of the North before 
two years roll round." 

After the rejection of the Crittenden Resolutions in 
December, 1861, Stevens wished to bring his party 
and the administration to higher and more aggressive 
ground upon slavery and emancipation. He would 
speak out the whole truth whether his colleagues would 
hear or forbear. On December 3. 1861, the first day 
of the regular session of the Thirty-seventh Congress, 
Stevens introduced a joint resolution for enactment into 
law containing two propositions : The first was to 
strike for general emancipation as the best means of 



SLAVERY AND THE WAR 175 

crushing the Rebellion; the second, to make full pay- 
ment for losses to loyal owners by this policy. His res- 
olution asserted that slavery had caused the Rebellion 
and that there could be no peace and union while that 
institution existed. As slaves are used by the rebels 
for supporting the war, and as by the law of nations it 
is right to liberate the slaves of an enemy to weaken his 
power; therefore the President should be directed to 
declare free, and direct our generals in command to 
order freedom to, all slaves who shall leave their mas- 
ters or aid in quelling the Rebellion. 

He thus urged boldly, at the very outset of the war, 
a policy of nation-wide emancipation. He would 
emancipate all slaves, whether of loyal or rebel masters, 
believing that if slavery were left anywhere in the 
South it would go everywhere. He urged this policy 
not in the hope of getting it adopted immediately, but 
as a means of educating public sentiment in and out of 
Congress. " I have no hope," he wrote to a friend. 
r Republicans are cowards, and Democrats will soon 
be in power again, as pro-slavery as ever." But as 
for himself he was determined that he would, at any 
rate, speak forth the truth that was in him and which 
he thought the country needed. 

Stevens' notable speech of January 22, 1862, on 
these resolutions shows him to be one of the earliest, 
boldest, most outspoken, and most influential, of the 
anti-slavery advocates who were seeking to direct the 
war to anti-slavery ends. The House was in the com- 
mittee of the whole on the state of the Union and the 
debate was taking a wide range. Because Stevens did 






176 THE LIFE OF THADDEUS STEVENS 

not expect to secure the adoption of this policy at that 
time, he was accused by the New York Times 1 of in- 
dulging in talk that was irrelevant, wasting the time 
of the House in talking about what was not before it. 
Stevens knew that Congress and his party were not 
yet ready to follow in the line of his proposals and 
that the public sentiment of the country did not sus- 
tain his radical policy. But he wished to educate that 
sentiment and to lead his party in the direction that 
he clearly saw would ultimately be found to be es- 
sential. He felt that the national government in the 
conduct of the war so far had been weak, timid, vacil- 
lating, ineffective, without appreciation of the formid- 
able task before it. The country needed a tonic; the 
administration needed nerve and a stiffened spine. 
Stevens would infuse more energy into the prosecution 
of the war, and he was not afraid to employ the means 
at hand. He did not think it a time for honeyed 
words and conciliation. There was no sense in using 
the words of conciliation and peace where there was 
no peace. Speech that would nerve the country for 
war was the message that was needed. The business 
of war was to conquer, and in the war now forced 
upon the nation, he stood for firm, unyielding, un- 
compromising, conquering force. 

It seems reasonable to say that in energizing the war 
power of the nation and leading it to lay hold of every 
possible weapon for overcoming resistance to the na- 
tional authority there was in the national forum no 
stronger personal force than Thaddeus Stevens. A 
review of his speeches will give one a high apprecia- 

1 January 25, 1862. 



SLAVERY AND THE WAR 177 

tion of their educational influence in this direction. 
He was a masterful leader, and it was a most fortunate 
thing for the national cause that he stood in a place 
of such power and influence in such a crisis. He was 
bitter and unsparing in his denunciation of the South- 
ern leaders for their course, and he sought to arouse 
the vigor and war spirit of the nation to crush the 
South. Men of power were needed for that hour, not 
men of soft and honeyed words, and Stevens wished 
the nation to arouse itself and assert its strength. He 
brought the accusation against the Southerners of hav- 
ing prepared for this crisis for thirty years past. 
Secession and war were not accidents of an hour. 
While these Southern leaders held the reins of govern- 
ment and could perpetuate and extend human bondage 
they deemed it prudent to stay in the Union, receive 
its benefits, and hold its offices ; but when they saw the 
growth of population giving power to the North they 
prepared for rebellion against the Constitution when 
they could no longer rule under it. 1 

Though this represents partisan and bitter crimina- 
tion in which Stevens frequently indulged, yet it is 
manifest that in certain ways he showed a better con- 
ception of the Southern spirit and character and of 
the consequent nature of the task before the country 
than that possessed by his opponents and critics. Dis- 
missing all hope of reunion by voluntary concession 
from the South, he wished to have it clearly recognized, 

1 In order to avoid excessive length of quotation I have re- 
duced passages from Stevens, and have in some cases used 
abridged phrases without sign of omission. I think I have not 
misrepresented his meaning in any degree. When he spoke for 
himself, no one could misunderstand him. 



i;8 THE LIFE OF THADDEUS STEVENS 

as it should have been, that from the Southern stand- 
point the separation of the states was final, and that 
the Confederate States would consent to reunion only- 
through the exhaustion of war. This was exactly the 
message that the nation needed to hear, to enable it 
to escape from a weak, dawdling and indecisive policy, 
as if the " little unpleasantries " were to end in another 
summer campaign. 1 The disaster resulting from this 
delusion was beyond estimate, but it was a delusion 
from which Stevens never suffered and against which 
he repeatedly warned his countrymen and those re- 
sponsible for the conduct of the war. The war would 
end only when the South could no longer resist, only 
when her resources were exhausted. " How, then," 
he asked, " can the South be wholly exhausted ? Let 
us not be deceived. Those who talk about peace in 
sixty days are shallow statesmen. The war will not 
end until the government shall more fully recognize 
the magnitude of the crisis; until they have discovered 
that this is an internecine war in which one party or 
the other must be reduced to hopeless feebleness and 
the power of further effort shall be utterly annihilated. 
It is a sad but true alternative. The South can never 
be reduced to that condition so long as the war is 
prosecuted on its present principles. The North with 
all its millions of people and its countless wealth can 
never conquer the South until a new mode of warfare 
is adopted. So long as these states are left the means 

1 The country was suffering from the delusion that the South 
would in a short time repent and turn from her course; or that 
if the government would but act tenderly and kindly, overtures 
cf peace might be extended, and reconciliation would be brought 
about in the same old happy Union ; and that, at any rate, con- 
quest and subjugation could never succeed. 






SLAVERY AND THE WAR 179 



of cultivating their fields through forced labor, you 
may expend the blood of thousands and billions of 
money year by year, without being any nearer the end, 
unless you reach it by your own submission and the 
ruin of the nation. Slavery gives the South a great 
advantage in time of war. They need not, and do 
not, withdraw a single hand from the cultivation of 
the soil. Every able-bodied white man can be spared 
for the army. The black man, without lifting a 
weapon, is the mainstay of the war. How, then, can 
the war be carried on so as to save the Union and con- 
stitutional liberty? Prejudices may be shocked, weak 
minds startled, weak nerves may tremble, but they must 
hear and adopt it. Universal emancipation must be 
proclaimed to all. Those who now furnish the means 
of war, but who are the natural enemies of slaveholders, 
must be made our allies. If the slaves no longer raised 
cotton and rice, tobacco and grain for the rebels, this 
war would cease in six months, even though the liber- 
ated slaves would not raise a hand against their mas- 
ters. They would no longer produce the means by 
which they sustain the war." 1 

Stevens saw that the task before the country could 
be accomplished only by the sacrifice of thousands of 
lives and millions of money. He recognized that the 
Southerners were proud, haughty, forceful and master- 
ful for war, and that their training had led them to be- 
lieve that they were born to command. They had 
declared that they would suffer their country to become 
a smoking ruin before they would submit. Stevens 
would accept the issue, and he said it were better " to 
1 Congressional Globe, January 22, 1862. 



180 THE LIFE OF THADDEUS STEVENS 

lay waste the whole South than to suffer the nation 
to be murdered, better to depopulate the country and 
plant it with a new race of freemen, than to suffer 
rebellion to triumph. There should be no negotia- 
tion, no parley, no truce until every rebel shall have 
laid down his arms and submitted to the government." 
Stevens had little regard for the " sympathizer with 
treason," who would " raise an outcry about a servile 
insurrection or prate learnedly about the Constitu- 
tion." He thought a rebellion of slaves fighting for 
their freedom was not so abhorrent as a rebellion of 
freemen fighting to murder the nation. He wished 
the Northern people to be possessed and impelled by 
the inspiration that comes from the glorious principle 
of freedom. He thought the North had not shown 
" the fiery zeal that impelled the South ; nothing of 
that determined and invincible courage that was in- 
spired in the Revolution by the grand idea of liberty, 
equality, and the rights of man." 

" Our statesmen do not seem to know how to touch the 
hearts of freemen and rouse them to battle. No sound of 
universal liberty has gone forth from the capitol. Our 
generals have a sword in one hand and shackles in the 
other. Let it be known that this government is fighting to 
carry out the great principles of the Declaration of Inde- 
pendence and the blood of every freeman would boil with 
enthusiasm and his nerves be strengthened for a holy war- 
fare. Give him the sword in one hand and the book of 
freedom in the other, and he will soon sweep despotism and 
rebellion from every corner of this continent. The occa- 
sion is forced upon us and the invitation presented to strike 
the chains from four millions of human beings and create 
them men; to extinguish slavery on this whole continent; 



SLAVERY AND THE WAR 181 

to wipe out so far as we are concerned the most hateful 
and infernal blot that ever disgraced the escutcheon of man ; 
to write a page in the history of the world whose bright- 
ness shall eclipse all the records of heroes and sages." x 

This was effective oratory, the oratory of convic- 
tion and action. It was spoken at a time in the early 
part of 1862 when slavery still seemed rooted and 
grounded in the policy of the President and of Con- 
gress and in the public sentiment of the country. Who 
will say that the voice of Stevens was not a power- 
ful influence in bringing the country and its rulers 
to the higher plane of emancipation, to a readiness to 
direct the war for liberty as well as for union ? 

When this speech went to the country it was re- 
ceived with joy and approval by the radical anti-slav- 
ery spirits that had been awaiting in patience and dis- 
appointment for a more positive and aggressive policy 
toward slavery on the part of the administration. 
Stevens received many approving letters, not only from 
his own constituents but from distant states. 

His radical anti-slavery constituents were every- 
where, and he was written to as a man who, amid 
wavering and doubt and dalliance, was bold to speak 
the truth and who dared to stand up for his convic- 
tions. Men who had never seen him and of whom he 
had never heard, sent him warm greeting and blessing. 
It is evident that the speech had a resounding effect 
and that it was a potent influence toward strengthening 
the anti-slavery cause and arousing a public opinion 
that subsequently became effective in controlling the 
ruling councils of the country. " Every true patriot 

1 Globe, January 22, 1862. 



1 82 THE LIFE OF THADDEUS STEVENS 

throughout the North," wrote one, "nay, in the wide 
world, as he rises from the reading of that speech, 
ejaculates from the holy of holies of his heart, ' God 
bless you, Thaddeus Stevens.' Amid all the obloquy 
and insults of pro-slavers and devils you have dared 
to stand up a man. In the good time coming you will 
be honored for it. God grant that it may be during 
your lifetime. I have never seen you, may never have 
the pleasure, yet I see you standing grandly, nay, 
proudly magnificent, while the burning words of truth 
leap from your lips and are sped on the wings of the 
lightning to gladden the souls of freemen and slaves. 
God bless you! God bless Thaddeus Stevens! " 1 

A gentle God-fearing Quaker in Pennsylvania wrote 
him that " all lovers of freedom have been made 
to rejoice in thy conduct. I have been wrought be- 
tween hope and despair. When thee offered the bill 
liberating all the slaves I said, ' That is noble,' and I 
truly rejoiced; but it was not long before I found the 
fools and sinners among you were so many that the 
result was doubtful." 2 

Another urged that no compromise should be per- 
mitted by which slavery would be saved. " I would 
fight to the bitter end. I am truly thankful for the 
course you have taken in this death struggle. I hope 
and pray that God will protect and preserve you to the 
end of this contest." 3 

It was perfectly clear to Stevens that slavery was 

1 Stevens' Papers, Library of Congress, Letter of YVm. W. 
Keith. Wyoming, N. Y., Feb. 8, 1862. 

2 Stevens' Papers, Thomas Whitson, Willow Glen, Pa., March 
20, 1862. 

3 Stevens' Papers, Frederick Miles, Sugar-Grove, Pa. 



SLAVERY AND THE WAR 183 

the cause of the war. Without that institution, in his 
opinion, America might have continued to be a united 
and happy people, and so long as slavery existed there 
could be no solid Union. If a compromise were 
patched up and this germ of evil remained, the ex- 
penditure of life and treasure would be in vain, and 
the peace secured would be but a delusion and a snare. 
If future generations are to live in peace this cause 
of strife must be removed. Stevens held that the 
principles of the republic and slavery were wholly in- 
compatible, that the two could not live together. His 
unyielding militant purpose, the supreme desire that 
most of all governed his public life in the period of 
war, was to bring slavery to an end as a means of 
crushing the Rebellion. 

Stevens was much displeased with the conservative 
policy of Lincoln in overruling military emancipation 
by General Fremont in Missouri, in August, 1861, 
and by General Hunter in the Department of the South 
in the spring of 1862. He became a sharp critic of 
the administration from the anti-slavery point of view. 
As the war continued and the administration still 
seemed conservative and reluctant to pursue an anti- 
slavery policy, Stevens repeatedly expressed his dis- 
satisfaction. Lincoln's message, proposing compen- 
sated emancipation, he characterized as " the most 
diluted milk-and-water gruel proposition that was 
ever given to the American nation." He urged the 
passage of the act * forbidding the return of fugitives, 
and he favored every act looking toward anti-slavery 
ends. He said he could not approve putting generals 

1 March 13, 1862. 



184 THE LIFE OF THADDEUS STEVENS 

who sympathized with slavery at the head of our 
armies with orders to pursue and return fugitive slaves, 
nor did he like it to have our forces set to guard the 
property of rebel soldiers. When asked if he intended 
his charges against the President and Secretary of 
War or only against the generals in the field, he said 
his remarks should " apply where they belong. I am 
no sycophant, no parasite. What I think I say. These 
acts have been perpetrated without rebuke. Let the 
w r orld determine where the responsibility rests. I 
believe the President is as honest a man as there is in 
the world; but I believe him to be too easy and ami- 
able, and to be misled by the malign influence of the 
Kentucky counselors, and the Border State men." * 

For rebuking General Hunter, who had declared 
emancipation within his military district on the ground 
that slavery and martial law were incompatible, Stev- 
ens thought the administration deserved to be driven 
out, and he denounced its policy of refusing the libera- 
tion and employment of the slaves. He would seize all 
property of disloyal men as our armies advanced and 
plant the South with a military colony, if the Southern- 
ers would not otherwise submit. His was a policy of 
" thorough " and he would go directly to the end in 
view, — the subjugation of the rebels, without scruple 
or hesitation. It was Stevens' opinion that the " trai- 
tors " deserved their doom and in the face of such a 
crisis and of the momentous task confronting the na- 
tion, he felt that he " who dallies is a dastard and he 
who doubts is damned." He would allow the sol- 
diers, as he said, to occupy the heritage of traitors and 

1 Globe, July 5, 1862. 



SLAVERY AND THE WAR 185 

build up there a land of freemen and of freedom, 
which fifty years hence would swarm with its millions 
without a slave upon its soil. He urged the admin- 
istration not to be afraid of the cry of abolitionism, 
but to follow out the policy of military emancipation 
that had already been suggested by the order of Gen- 
eral Hunter. He had no hope of success in the war 
until that policy was adopted. He viewed the matter 
not only as a question of emancipation, or abolition, 
but as the only means of putting down the Rebellion. 
To this policy he was convinced the nation would 
have to come at last, and to delay would be but to 
lose. Within a year's time he had the satisfaction of 
seeing his more conservative colleagues, as well as the 
administration and the nation at large, come to this 
doctrine which he so early and boldly proclaimed. 

He spoke boldly and repeatedly for the employ- 
ment of negro troops, startling and shocking as the 
proposition seemed to those whom he considered the 
craven and cowardly conservatives. He was not 
averse to shocking those who were constantly urging 
gentle processes toward the " erring brothers " of the 
South and who demanded that the war be conducted in 
such a way as to leave slavery intact. "If men are 
to be shot in this war," said Stevens, " let it not be our 
cousins, relatives and friends. Let it be the slaves 
of the traitors who have caused the war. Would that 
100,000 of them had been at Richmond to receive the 
first fire of their villainous masters. Am I to stand 
here and be told that it will not do to let black men 
shoot and be shot at instead of white men ! I abhor the 
doctrine and despise the policy. The blood of thou- 



1 86 THE LIFE OF THADDEUS STEVENS 

sands moldering in untimely graves is upon the souls 
of this Congress and Cabinet. I no longer agree that 
this administration is pursuing a wise policy. Its 
policy should be to free the slaves, enlist and drill them, 
and set them to shooting their masters if they do not 
submit." 

Speaking again in the early part of the following 
year for the enlistment of negro troops he denounced 
an opponent, 1 for saying that he would fight only for 
the freedom of his own race. " That patriotism," he 
said, " that is wholly absorbed in one's own country 
is narrow and selfish. That philanthropy which em- 
braces only one's own race and leaves the other numer- 
ous races of mankind to bondage and to misery is cruel 
and detestable." 2 

At this time, in February, 1863, Stevens recalled his 
conviction and his warning that neither the admin- 
istration nor the people realized the magnitude of the 
war; that if it continued every bondman belong- 
ing to a rebel might be called on to aid in the restora- 
tion of the Union ; and that the Union would not be 
restored until the Southerners were deprived of their 
main support, the slaves. Two years of bloody war, 
accumulating debt, bleeding hearts and weeping homes 
had given him no cause to change his opinion. The 
Rebellion was still in the field with as brave men and 
better generals than our own, and unless we " put 
more energy into the commanding generals and gain 
victories, all I predicted will happen, — the next Con- 
gress will be in other than Republican hands." Such 
a result, he thought, would be a triumph of the Re- 

1 May, of Maryland. " Globe, Feb. 2, 1863. 



SLAVERY AND THE WAR 187 

bellion, doing more to divide the Union than twenty 
rebel victories, and yet " we are told that we must 
not employ the oppressed slave against his oppressors." 
He maintained that the blacks should be allowed to 
bear their share in a war of liberation. He defended 
them against the charge of cowardice and he expressed 
his contempt for the Northern men who would save 
the property of rebels and fill Southern graves " with 
our relatives rather than the property of traitors." " I 
do not expect to live to see the day," he said, " when 
merit shall counterbalance the crime of color." * 

During the summer and fall of 1862, Stevens con- 
tinued his criticisms of what seemed to him the fatally 
conservative policy of the administration. 

Before the policy of emancipation had been an- 
nounced to the country by President Lincoln, and while 
the country was amid the gloom of continued military 
defeats, the outlook was decidedly dark, both for the 
Union and for the anti-slavery cause. Stevens kept 
urging Lincoln to break away from the influence of 
timid counselors; to reconstitute his Cabinet; to cut 
out the Blairs; to assert himself against the Border 
State politicians ; to reanimate the country with a zeal 
for liberty as well as a love for the Union ; and to lay 
hold boldly upon every weapon of attack, political and 
military, with which he might prosecute the war and 
defeat the enemy. He had no faith in Border State 
Unionism. 

His purpose was to stir up the people that a proper 
public sentiment might be brought to bear upon those 
in power. Unless a change of policy could be brought 
1 Globe, Feb. 2, 1863. 



1 88 THE LIFE OF THADDEUS STEVENS 

about, he had no hope. Unless Lincoln could be 
forced to commit himself boldly to the anti-slavery 
cause, and to fight the Rebellion in such a way as to 
bring the greatest possible injury to its promoters, 
he feared that a base peace would have to be negotiated. 
To avoid that Stevens was ready to resort to any 
extreme. 

" It seems to me," he wrote, on August 10, 1862, 
" that we are just as far from the true course as ever. 
Unless the people speak in their primary assemblies no 
good will come, and there seems little chance of that. 
A change of Cabinet is our only hope." 

Again, writing from Lancaster, September 5, 1862, 
he expressed the dark and pessimistic view which had 
been forced upon him by the circumstances and defeats 
from which the country and the anti-slavery cause were 
suffering. " The symptoms give me no promise of 
good. The removal of Hunter and Butler and the con- 
tinued refusal to receive negro soldiers, convince me 
that the administration are preparing the people to re- 
ceive an ignominious surrender to the South. It is 
plain that nothing approaching the present policy will 
subdue the rebels. Whether we shall find anybody 
with a sufficient grasp of mind and sufficient moral 
courage to treat this as a radical revolution and remodel 
our institutions, I doubt. It would involve the desola- 
tion of the South as well as emancipation, and a re- 
peopling of half the continent. This ought to be done, 
but it startles most men." ' 

The fall elections, indicating a reaction that meant 
rebuke and defeat for the Republican party and Mr. 
1 Stevens' Correspondence. 



SLAVERY AND THE WAR 189 

Lincoln's administration, did nothing to daunt the ag- 
gressive spirit of Stevens. These political defeats 
seemed rather to fan the flame of his radicalism and 
to lead him to insist all the more that the Cabinet 
should be reorganized and a more pronounced policy 
against slavery should be adopted. " Nothing seems 
to go right," he wrote. " I am almost despairing. 
Without a new Cabinet there is no hope. It were a 
great blessing if Seward could be removed. It would 
revive hope, though I fear it can not be done. But 
Fessenden is not the man for his successor. He has 
too much of the vile ingredient called conservatism, 
which is worse than secession. He is not so great as 
at one time I hoped he would prove. Bancroft would 
be better. But no one will succeed. Things go by 
a wild chance." x 

He drew a darker picture than the outlook justified, 
as we now know. But his motive was clear and true. 
It was to arouse, by repeated speeches and letters, the 
anti-slavery forces in the North to demand a more posi- 
tive and aggressive policy. 

It has been said that this radicalism of men like 
Stevens, this impatience to strike at slavery, at what- 
ever cost, was one of the greatest causes of worry and 
embarrassment to President Lincoln in his devoted ef- 
fort to save the Union; that Stevens was to Lincoln, 
not a help, but only a painful " thorn in the flesh." 
It is said that Lincoln could not go faster nor further 
in opposition to slavery than public sentiment per- 
mitted; that if he had committed himself to the radi- 
calism of the anti-slavery leaders he would have lost 

1 Stevens' Papers, Oct. and Nov., 1862. 



190 THE LIFE OF THADDEUS STEVENS 

the slaveholcling Unionists in the Border States; he 
would have lost wavering Republican voters in the 
North to the Democratic party; he would have lost 
volunteer soldiers to the army who had no thought 
nor intention of fighting in an abolition war; and thus 
he might have lost the cause of the Union itself. 

If it be said that such anti-slavery criticisms as Stev- 
ens indulged in embarrassed an ever-faithful and over- 
burdened President who was merely biding his time 
while waiting on public opinion, it may be asked, upon 
the other hand, how public opinion was ever to be 
brought to a higher plane, so that the great emanci- 
pator might be enabled to do what he desired. His 
desire was to lead on to that good time when all men 
might be in the enjoyment of freedom. Could that 
good time have come at all if the insurgent and radical 
anti-slavery men had all kept still, or had uttered noth- 
ing but pleasant and honeyed words for Lincoln and 
his Cabinet? If Stevens and his kind had consented 
to leave the administration in peace under the control 
of the " timid conservative counselors " who, in both 
field and forum, were ready to conduct the war with 
polite and fraternal consideration for the Southern 
whites and with utter indifference to the cause of the 
slave; if they had not boldly fought and spoken for 
their cause, it is not likely that either liberty or union 
could have been preserved in the great civil struggle. 
It should be remembered that a tremendous struggle 
was going on within the councils of those friendly to 
the cause of the Union for the control of the Presi- 
dent and of the presidential powers. The radical anti- 
slavery men, the " progressive insurgents " of their 



SLAVERY AND THE WAR 191 

day, won out, but they never could have won by a 
policy of silence and fear. It is equally clear that they 
could not have won by a disposition to conciliation and 
compromise. It was not a species of lesc-majestc to 
criticize Lincoln. He was fairly open to criticism and 
no one knew better than himself the value of honest 
censure. He sought no such pinnacle of exclusion 
above his fellow men, and his course shows how wisely 
and well he profited by the honest and patriotic censure 
that was visited upon him. He candidly and modestly 
acknowledged that he did not control events but that 
events controlled him. He yielded where he ought to 
have yielded, he resisted where resistance was de- 
manded. One of the events that controlled him was 
the persistent purpose of the Rebellion and its formid- 
able character, which Stevens had so early and so ear- 
nestly attempted to demonstrate; while another stub- 
born and controlling event was the unbending purpose 
of anti-slavery radicals like Stevens to see to it that 
the restoration of the Union should carry with it the 
abolition of slavery. 

It is now quite clear, and it was clear to men of 
foresight and vision then, that the nation had to choose 
between the Union and slavery. They could not both 
be preserved together. After the first year of war it 
was only the dull unseeing persons who thought other- 
wise, those who had no moral purpose or who were 
very easy of conscience on the subject of slavery. 
The loyal citizen had no alternative ; he had to choose 
which he would cling to and which he would give up. 
It was blind and fatuous to talk of keeping slavery and 
the Union together. The old Union of guilty com- 



192 THE LIFE OF THADDEUS STEVENS 

plicity with slavery was dead and it should never be 
revived. This was the whole of Stevens' view, — all 
he insisted upon; and who will say that he and the 
men of his kind did not help Lincoln to realize it? 
The men who preferred to " let the Union slide " if 
its preservation by war threatened slave property were 
a poor reliance, in Stevens' judgment, for the support 
of the vigorous measures that were necessary to crush- 
ing the Rebellion. A progressive policy on slavery was 
what Stevens demanded, and there was no power so 
great nor name so high as to restrain the utterance 
of his conviction that it was futile, not to say criminal, 
to continue the conduct of the war on the " stand pat " 
policy of the " Union as it was and' the Constitution 
as it is." 

" ' The Union as it was and the Constitution as it 
is ' is an atrocious idea ; it is man stealing," he said. 
" Those who wish to reestablish the Union on that 
basis can not escape the guilt of attempting to enslave 
their fellow men. The Southern States have forfeited 
all rights under the Constitution which they have re- 
nounced. They are forever estopped from claiming 
the Constitution as it was. The United States may 
give them those rights if it choose, but they can not 
claim them." The Slave States had voluntarily thrown 
off the protection of the Constitution, and " under the 
law of nations it is not only our right but our duty 
to knock off every shackle from every limb." With 
a deep and intense hatred of slavery and a withering 
contempt for all who would sustain it he exclaimed : 
"If a disgraceful peace were made leaving the cause 
of this Rebellion and the cause of future wars un- 



SLAVERY AND THE WAR 193 

touched and living, its authors would be the objects of 
the deepest execration and of the blackest infamy. . . . 
All this clamor against radicals, all this cry of the 
1 Union as it was,' is but a persistent effort to reestab- 
lish slavery on the limbs of immortal beings. May 
the God of Justice thwart their designs and paralyze 
their wicked efforts." * 

It was not the persistent utterance of such noble 
convictions that embarrassed Lincoln and made the 
issue doubtful. " Faithful are the wounds of a friend, 
while the kisses of an enemy are deceitful." The anti- 
slavery men were faithful friends to every effective 
measure for the maintenance of the Union. Lincoln 
knew full well that he could confidently rely upon them. 
It was not the wounds from this source that most 
worried the suffering President. It was the Copper- 
heads; the weak-kneed and thin-skinned Unionists, 
who were half secessionists ; men who were willing to 
stand by the Union only if it protected slavery, and 
who were ever ready to denounce the administration 
for every forward step, — these were the men who 
made Lincoln's life a burden in his conduct of the 
war for the Union. At every suggestion of inter- 
ference with slavery, these men — the Border State 
slaveholders and the Northern Copperheads — were 
constantly shouting "Abolitionist!" "Unconstitu- 
tional! " which, Stevens said, were " favorite terms of 
reproach in the mouths of tyrants and blackguards." 
Stevens wished to brace up some of his Northern col- 
leagues against their quaking fear of being dubbed with 
this once odious epithet. He recognized in Lincoln 

1 Globe, Jan. 22, 1864. 







194 THE LIFE OF THADDEUS STEVENS 

" the best meaning of living men," but he regretted ex- 
ceedingly that the President " had not shown the stern- 
ness of purpose and the Jacksonian resolution to save 
the life of the nation by cutting the Gordian knot, in- 
stead of nibbling at its fibers." He said that " Lincoln 
had been restrained in his free action by the subtle 
metaphysics of the Massachusetts Whigs and by the 
perverts of the New York school, who have sought to 
forget and to make others forget that there was ever 
such a question as Liberty and Slavery and who have 
sought to end the war in sixty days by not hurting or 
provoking the rebels." 

While Stevens had charity for the President, though 
hesitating not to criticize his slowness and denounce 
the false advisers around him, he had no charity for 
" the bold and defiant Democrats " who, as he thought, 
were seeking power and " were fighting the battles of 
the rebels under the guise of the Constitution." These 
men were ready to capitulate even though to do so 
would be to perpetuate and extend human slavery. 
" Those who prate for peace propose now to offer 
the South new constitutional guarantees, and yet they 
talk of the ' Constitution as it is.' These traitor Dem- 
ocrats propose to amend the Constitution so as to pro- 
hibit liberty in the South, but will not agree to amend 
it so as to prohibit slavery in the North." 

It was upon these men that Stevens visited his hot- 
test anathemas. " Can the imagination," he asked, 
" picture a class of men from the king of Dahomey 
to the rebel Copperheads of New York and Pennsyl- 
vania whose hearts are blacker, or whose thirst for 
despotism is more hateful? Neither of the parties 



SLAVERY AND THE WAR 195 

could consent to ' the Union as it was.' No great 
war ever left the parties at its close as they were at 
its beginning." He referred to the " brutal resolu- 
tion " of a late Democratic convention in Lancaster 
County, recommending to the legislature " to deprive 
a whole race of innocent men from breathing the air 
of Pennsylvania." " The advocates of the measure," 
said Stevens, " whether in the convention or in the 
Legislature, are moral monsters, outlaws from every 
principle of humanity, and of Christian civilization." 

" These base Copperheads would change the Constitution 
to conciliate the South, but not to hurt slavery. Before 
this Rebellion began the Constitution bound us hand and 
foot to the car of human bondage. Now when an all-wise 
Providence has caused this wicked treason to break those 
obligations and enable us to strike off their shackles and 
guarantee universal freedom throughout this grand conti- 
nent, these vipers, instead of glorying in the opportunity, 
insist with one voice on reimposing their chains and doom- 
ing this fair land, and generation upon generation of human 
beings, to its blighting curse. 

" Of what stuff are such things made ? Have they human 
souls? I doubt if there can be found in the hottest corner 
of pandemonium cinders black enough and hard enough to 
make hearts for such inhuman wretches." 1 

A year later Stevens was able to speak with a more 
hopeful, not to say triumphant note. He then saw 
the beginning of the end of slavery in America. He 
warmly supported Lincoln's reelection to the presi- 
dency, and in a notable campaign speech in the Union 
League Hall in Philadelphia, Oct. 4, 1864, he sought to 
encourage the people in the contest and to interpret 

1 Speech before the Union League in Lancaster, 1863. 



196 THE LIFE OF THADDEUS STEVENS 

the deep significance of the issue involved. " From 
this Rebellion," he said, " this republic will emerge 
reunited, purified, strengthened, and glorious through- 
out all time, or it will sink into profound despotism, 
slavery, and infamy. On the result of the ensuing 
election depends one or the other condition. Let no 
one beguile the people at such a time with false and 
flattering tongue. Let none dare to daub with un- 
tempered mortar." 

It is not now easy to realize the spirit of weakness 
and surrender, not to speak of craven disloyalty, which 
Stevens and the strong Unionists had to encounter in 
those trying times. There were those " half traitors 
and half cowards" who were urging the Northern 
people to withdraw their armies and sue for peace. 
Honorable W. B. Reed, a Pennsylvania Copperhead, 
bearing a name distinguished in Revolutionary annals, 
had ventured to stand in Philadelphia in the midst of 
the Civil War and urge assent to the dismemberment of 
the Union and the perpetuity of slavery, and he urged 
that Pennsylvania should cast her lot with the South. 
He drew a dreary picture of the sacrifices of the war, — 
" a quarter of a million dead, millions of hopeless debt, 
industry paralyzed, private fortunes shattered, the tax- 
gatherer and the press-gang ever ready to start on 
their relentless errand. Every day dissipates the the- 
ory of conquest and widens the chasm which separates 
us from our brethren of the South. The great Middle 
States must speak and act in self-defense. If it be 
a choice between the subjugation of the Southern 
States and their tenure as military provinces and peace- 
able recognition, I am for recognition. If the choice 



SLAVERY AND THE WAR 197 

lie between a continuance of the war and the recog- 
nition of the Southern Confederacy, I am in favor 
of recognition, of course making the abolition party- 
responsible for the dread necessity. The blood of the 
Union is on them. " x 

This is a fair sample of the Democratic political 
literature of the time which Stevens was called upon 
to combat. No word of reproach for slaveholders in 
arms against the nation; all reproaches were for the 
lovers of freedom who had stirred up opposition to 
slavery. The Constitution was constantly quoted in 
favor of those who had thrown it overboard. If you 
touch slavery you violate the blessed Constitution and 
it will irritate the rebel masters and make them still 
more angry, and, in any case, it is better to let them 
have their way than to fight. 

When it is remembered that a political party avow- 
ing such principles and recognizing such men as lead- 
ers had almost carried a majority of Congress in 1862 
and were now contesting for the presidency with such 
peace purposes in view, we may see how near the 
nation was to surrender and how imminent was peace- 
ful dissolution in the dark days of the Civil War. It 
was no time for half-hearted men and half-hearted 
speech. If ever there was a time in the history of 
America that called for men of fighting courage, for 
men like Pym and Cromwell, it was then. It was not 
a time to load Union muskets with sawdust nor Union 
speech with tender words of " fraternal regard for our 
brethren of the South." It was a time for courageous 

1 W. B. Reed, Vindication of Certain Political Opinions, Phil- 
adelphia, 1862. 



i 9 8 THE LIFE OF THADDEUS STEVENS 

fighting men, — for men like Thaddeus Stevens whose 
words always had in them a tonic for the nerves of 
loyal men. Facing the Copperhead leaders of Penn- 
sylvania in the bitter political conflicts for the presi- 
dency in the Civil War, he sought to recall to his 
countrymen the origin of the conflict; how unprovoked 
the Rebellion had been; how timid men had humbled 
themselves in the dust before Southern insolence; how 
they had proposed so to amend the Constitution as to 
make the abolition of slavery impossible in a con- 
stitutional way. 

" The slaveholding madmen rejected the offers and 
spurned the prostrate suppliants with scorn while yet kneel- 
ing in the dust. Their folly was the salvation of freedom. 
Had not the gods made them mad we should this day have 
been in shackles instead of having stricken them from 
others. Now that there is not a slave in the American 
continent, shall we agree for the sake of a disgraceful and 
precarious peace to reenslave four million human beings? 
Shall we aid to rivet the chains on a whole race of God's 
children that we may purchase the poor boon of a temporary 
peace from triumphant traitors? If we are men we will 
resist it to the death. If we are Christians we will sooner 
suffer martyrdom. Furthermore let us consent to no peace 
merely on the simple condition of the maintenance of the 
Union. That would be a weak betrayal of noble men who 
have fought our battles. Men who make such suggestions, 
in the Cabinet or out, can be naught else than miserable 
cowards or moral traitors. Men who aspire to march at 
the head of a nation or to be foremost in the party of 
progress, have no right to tremble or despair when danger 
threatens. My young friends, I know not how such pol- 
troonery stirs your warm blood, but, old as I am, it makes 
the blood boil in my thin worn veins. It is not by such 






SLAVERY AND THE WAR 199 

trembling and trimming in compromises that great nations 
are established or sustained." 1 

He rejoiced that Lincoln had now risen above 
Border State seductions, above Republican cowardice, 
had elevated himself to the full height of his moral 
nature, and had declared for both the integrity of the 
Union and the abandonment of slavery. " Well may 
every honest man, well may every man who loves God 
and loves liberty exclaim, ' Thank God for Abraham 
Lincoln.' Wiser and firmer than his official or officious 
admirers, he has saved the nation from disgrace; he 
has rescued liberty from destruction. I would not 
bestow indiscriminate praise upon every act of the 
President. Whoever heaps fulsome eulogy on those 
in power is a parasite and a sycophant and not an 
honest counselor. ' He crooks the pregnant hinges of 
the knee that thrift may follow fawning.' An hon- 
est critic who points out the errors of his friends may 
be believed when he speaks of their virtues. He who 
denies any errors to his idol makes him more than hu- 
man and is entitled to no credit." 

In the glad prospect before his country Stevens 
thought Lincoln's countrymen might well forget that 
he had erred in too long listening to false and timid 
counselors. 

The party of the Union was now united in an ag- 
gressive and positive policy. The political contest in 
Congress now was only with the apologists of the Re- 
bellion and the friends and defenders of slavery who 
claimed to be also friends of the Union. The final 

1 Speech, Phila., Oct. 4, 1864, Union League Gazette. 



200 THE LIFE OF THADDEUS STEVENS 

contest with these persistent opponents of a true Union, 
with universal liberty as its basis, was to be over the 
first of the great war amendments. 

After the reelection of Lincoln in the fall of 1864, 
it was seen that in the new Congress just elected there 
would be a sufficient majority to pass the thirteenth 
amendment to the Constitution forever abolishing 
slavery throughout the United States. This amend- 
ment had been introduced into the House by Mr. Ashley, 
of Ohio, and into the Senate by Mr. Wilson, of Iowa, 
as early as December, 1863. It had passed the Senate 
by the necessary two-thirds majority on April 8, 1864. 
Stevens was quick to bring it up in the House, but 
on June 15, 1864, it failed there of the necessary two- 
thirds vote. 1 

It was opposed in debate by the most absurd, strict- 
construction and obstructive views. Pendleton, of 
Ohio, asserted that there were parts of the Constitu- 
tion that could not be amended, not even by the con- 
sent of all the states, save one. The right of any 
state to regulate its own " domestic institutions " was 
one of these. In our system of federal government 
slavery was a " domestic institution," a cowardly 
euphemism for slavery. Its abolition or retention be- 
longed entirely to the state. It was, therefore, be- 
yond the amending power. If all the states but one 
should vote for the proposed amendment abolishing 
slavery, it could not be abolished in that one save by 
unconstitutional usurpation and lawless force. " If," 
said Pendleton, " you propose that amendment on the 
dissenting states by force it will be their right to 

1 The vote stood, yeas, 93 ; nays, 65 ; not voting, 23. 



SLAVERY AND THE WAR 201 

resist you by force and to call to their aid all the pow- 
ers which God and nature have given them to make 
that force effective. If you propose to establish 
over them by force a constitution which you have just 
amended by force of arms, I warn you that you will 
destroy the last lingering hope, faint and small as it 
now is, that you will ever be able to restore this Union, 
or even to maintain the jurisdiction of the federal 
government over those states." 1 

This meant, it would seem quite fair to say, that 
Pendleton did not wish to see the Union restored by 
successful war. He wanted, rather, that the war 
should cease and the Southerners be allowed to have 
their way, vainly hoping that they would choose, of 
their own good will, to be reconciled to the Union on 
terms not utterly degrading to the national honor. 2 

1 See the Cong. Globe for June 15, 1864, and Jan. II, 1865. 
In this discussion Stevens forced Pendleton to the reductio ad 
absurdum of asserting that if three-fourths of the states at- 
tempted such an amendment they would thereby take them- 
selves out of the Union, while the minority of the resisting 
states would compose the only true constitutional union. The 
record is punctuated with laughter at this point, indicating that 
there were at least some members who had a reasonable sense 
of the ridiculous. Globe, p. 223, Jan. 11, 1865. 

2 Pendleton warmly disclaimed any sympathy with rebellion 
and slavery. He was an honest man, but whatever his inten- 
tion, he should be held responsible for the effect of his words. 
And it is impossible to see how his argument could have any 
other effect than to give aid and comfort to slavery and rebellion. 
He was giving, as he said, " the highest admiration of his intel- 
lect and the profound homage of his heart " to a blessed docu- 
ment, called the Constitution, forgetting his country, the nation, 
and the welfare of millions for whom the Constitution existed. 
It was government by parchment that he was contending for. 
He predicted that if the majority of the House forced the final 
emancipation of the slaves, the South " will liberate and arm 
its negroes, and aided by the moral force, if not the material 
power of Europe, will establish its independence, and your Union 
President will sign the treaty of dissolution." Globe, Jan. 11, 
1865. 



202 THE LIFE OF THADDEUS STEVENS 

The vanity of such a hope (if it were not a mere 
deceitful and partisan pretense, as Thaddeus Stevens 
was disposed to believe) was proved by every voice 
and sign of public opinion that came up from the South. 

Stevens combated Pendleton and he contended for 
the unlimited power of amendment. He held very 
logically that slavery was as suitable a subject for the 
exercise of the amending power as was religion, to 
which one of the early amendments related. No 
power had been granted to Congress to legislate on 
the subject of religion, but the absence of such dele- 
gated power did not restrain the First Congress from 
passing an amendment touching that subject. A like 
exercise of power could be had with reference to 
slavery. 

After his reelection Lincoln, in his annual message 
in December, urged Congress again to take up the 
amendment and press it to passage. He asserted that 
it was sure to pass sooner or later. The people had 
spoken for it and the majority in the next Congress 
would pass it, and the sooner it were done the better. 
It would be worth thousands of armed men to the 
Union cause and, as Lincoln urged, it might now be 
reasonably voted for by those who had opposed it 
before merely in deference to the expressed will of 
the majority. 

"When the amendment came up again it still met 
with Democratic opposition. On January II, 1865, 
Pendleton, closing a long and labored speech in oppo- 
sition, referred to Stevens' constitutional argument 
which was so abhorrent to the strict-construction, 
states-rights, Democratic school. Pendleton recog- 



SLAVERY AND THE WAR 203 

nized Stevens' fame " for his sledge-hammer power 
of logic," but he warned Stevens " to be careful how 
he asserts too far his doctrine " that the war had 
abrogated the Constitution. " Let him be careful lest 
he may find that it will dissolve the ties which bind 
the Northern States one to the other, and they be re- 
mitted to their original position of independence. Let 
him be careful lest when the passions of these times 
be passed away and the historian shall go back to 
discover where was the original infraction of the Con- 
stitution he may find that sin lies at the door of 
others than the people now in arms." * 

This was equivalent to charging Stevens and those 
who acted with him with responsibility for the war. 
Stevens replied with spirit to so grave a charge. It 
was during the last days in the discussions of the 
thirteenth amendment, whose passage by the House on 
January 31, 1865, was hailed as " an immortal and sub- 
lime event." Up to this time in the history of the 
amendment, Stevens, though constantly pressing the 
amendment for passage, had spoken but little upon it. 
The passage from Pendleton quoted above seems to 
have been the occasion of calling from Stevens a brief 
and valuable summary of his life's course toward slav- 
ery in the last speech he made on that subject during the 
Civil War. 1 A brief extract of that speech seems a 
fitting close to this chapter, summarizing, as it does, 
Stevens' attitude toward slavery and the war. 

If it be true, as charged, that he and his anti-slavery 
associates had first " infracted " the Constitution and 
caused the war, it should induce them not only to 

1 Globe, Jan. 13, 1S65. 



204 THE LIFE OF THADDEUS STEVENS 

great regret but to deep remorse. What, then, up to 
the time of the breaking out of this Rebellion, was their 
position upon the subject of slavery that caused this 
war? He begged but a few moments to state it. 

" From my earliest youth I was taught to read the 
Declaration of Independence and to revere its sublime 
principles. I have found in the great men of antiquity, 
in all their works which have survived the ravages of 
time, one unanimous denunciation of tyranny and 
slavery and eulogy of liberty. And my hatred of this 
infernal institution and my love of liberty were further 
inflamed as I saw the inspired teachings of Socrates 
and the divine inspirations of Jesus. 

" Being immovably fixed in these principles I took 
my stand among my fellow-citizens, and on all oc- 
casions, whether in public or in private, in season, and, 
if there could be such a time, out of season, I never 
hesitated to express those ideas and sentiments, and 
when I first went into public assemblies, I uttered this 
language. I have done it among the pelting and hoot- 
ing of mobs, and I never quailed before the infernal 
spirit, and I hope I never shrank from the responsi- 
bility of my language, j This feeling grew with my 
growth and strengthened with my strength and I 
thank God it has not decayed with enfeebling age. 

" When, fifteen years ago, I was honored with a 
seat in this body, it was dangerous to talk against 
this institution, a danger which gentlemen now here 
will never be able to appreciate. Some of us, however, 
have experienced it ; my friend from Illinois on my 
right (Mr. Washburne) has. And yet. sir, I did 
not hesitate, in the midst of bowie-knives and revolvers 






SLAVERY AND THE WAR 205 

and howling demons upon the other side of the House, 
to stand here and denounce this infamous institution in 
language which possibly now, on looking at it, I might 
deem intemperate, but which I then deemed necessary 
to rouse the public attention and cast odium upon the 
worst institution upon earth, one which is a disgrace 
to man and would be an annoyance to the infernal 
spirits. 

" Mr. Speaker, while I thus denounced it and ut- 
tered my sentiments in favor of universal freedom 
everywhere, I found in the Constitution of my country 
what I construed, whatever others may think, as a 
prohibition from touching slavery where it existed; 
and through all my course I recognized and bowed to 
a provision in that Constitution which I always re- 
garded as its only blot; and I challenge the scrutiny 
of my respected colleague on the Committee of Ways 
and Means, or any other gentleman, through all the 
records of utterances in this House, to find one single 
motion or one single word which claimed on our part 
to touch slavery in the states where it existed. We 
admitted that it was there, protected by that instrument. 
We claimed that in the territories we had full power 
over it, and in the District of Columbia; and I, with 
those who acted with me, could not hesitate as to what 
our duty required in excluding it from the free soil 
of the country and confining it to the spots it already 
polluted. 

" Such was our position, not disturbing slavery 
where the Constitution protected it, but abolishing it 
wherever we had the constitutional power and pro- 
hibiting its further extension. I claimed the right 



206 THE LIFE OF THADDEUS STEVENS 

then as I claim it now, to denounce it everywhere, 
even in foreign lands, so that if such language could 
anywhere affect public opinion it might do so. I 
claimed the right to hedge it into the smallest space ; 
• but no man with whom I acted ever proposed to violate 
: the Constitution for the purpose of touching slavery." 

He then stated the well-known position of his party 
in favor of the exclusion of slavery from the terri- 
tories and its abolition in the District of Columbia. 
He endorsed the opinion of " the great man of the 
West that it was a sin and a shame to believe that there 
was no power on earth that could abolish slavery over 
every inch of ground in the world." Referring to 
Pendleton's pleas and efforts to ward off attacks upon 
slavery, Stevens concluded : " I will be willing to take 
my chance, when we all molder in the dust. He may 
have his epitaph written, if it be truly written, ' Here 
rests the ablest and most pertinacious defender of 
slavery and opponent of liberty,' and I will be satisfied 
if my epitaph shall be written thus: ' Here lies one 
who never rose to any eminence, and who only courted 
the low ambition to have it said that he had striven 
to ameliorate the condition of the poor, the lowly, the 
downtrodden of every race and language and color.' 
[Applause.] 

" I shall be content, with such a eulogy on his lofty 
tomb and such an inscription on my humble grave, to 
trust our memories to the judgment of after ages." x 

1 Globe, Jan. 13, 1865. 



CHAPTER X 

THE CONSTITUTION AND THE WAR 

T T 7E come now to inquire into the attitude of Ste- 
* * vens toward the Constitution, the constitution- 
ality of war measures, and the effect of secession and 
war on the constitutional status of the seceded states. 
Much that has been said upon slavery bears directly 
or indirectly upon this inquiry; but this important 
aspect of Stevens' career and opinions in time of war, 
calls for further notice and elaboration. It has an 
important bearing on his later course in reconstruc- 
tion, and it is important to notice that his constitu- 
tional opinions after the war were merely those that 
he announced and defended during the war. 

The anti-slavery policy advocated by Stevens and 
men like him was one of the apologies for opposition 
to the war. The anti-slavery men were accused of 
wishing to make the war entirely subservient to aboli- 
tion, and of being unwilling to see the Union restored 
with slavery as it was. They would not be quiet, and 
they were charged with obtruding their opinions every- 
where, with the result that, while at the beginning of 
the war the nation was united, the Union forces were 
soon divided, since those who wished to prosecute the 
war solely for the purpose of restoring the Union were 
alienated and estranged. 1 

1 Diven, of N, Y., Cong. Globe, Jan. 22, 1862. 

207 



2o8 THE LIFE OF THADDEUS STEVENS 

A large body of conservative men in the North, 
chiefly among those who had opposed the Republican 
party and Mr. Lincoln's election, looked upon the anti- 
slavery program both as a perversion of the Con- 
stitution and an entire departure from the original and 
legitimate objects of the war. Under the leadership 
of adroit and able men, these conservative Democrats 
and constitutional Unionists became a compact party 
of opposition whose opinions and purposes may be 
summarized as follows : 

In the first place they accepted the Crittenden Reso- 
lutions 1 as their war platform, and they would have 
it clearly recognized that the primary and sole object 
of the war was to save the LInion. It was not to in- 
terfere in any way with slavery. Any act or policy 
tending to turn the military forces of the government 
from mere Union-saving to abolitionism, or toward 
emancipation as a means of Union-saving, was uncon- 
stitutional and a perversion of the object of war, and 
it ought to be restricted. 

In the second place, according to the policy of this 
anti-war party, the war must be so conducted and 
ended as to preserve the equality of the states. The 
Union was based on this equality and it must be pre- 
served as it was made. There must be no conquest, 
nor subjugation, nor interference with statehood or 
with the rights of the states, their governments, or 
their domestic laws. Whoever should attempt by 
federal authority to destroy any of the states or to set 
up any federal authority within them not allowed under 
conditions of peace, was guilty of a high crime against 
1 See p. 171. 



THE CONSTITUTION AND THE WAR 209 

the Union; and any person proposing peace on any 
other basis than the integrity of the states was as 
guilty a criminal as he who would propose peace on 
the basis of a dismembered Union. The Southern 
States must not be reduced to provinces or territories, 
nor the Southern people regarded as alien enemies; 
but the constitutional relation of the states to the 
Union was to be recognized as being undisturbed and 
the constitutional rights of the Southern people should 
be fully maintained. To prosecute hostilities beyond 
these limits, or in a spirit of conquest in violation of 
these principles would destroy state equality, subvert 
the Constitution and prevent the Union. 1 

This meant that the constitutional limits set to con- 
gressional and executive power must be the same in 
war as in peace. Secession, rebellion, and war had 
made no change as to the powers that Congress could 
exercise within the states, be they the states of the 
Confederacy or the states of the Union. The Presi- 
dent's powers were not increased. Therefore his 
executive orders, his proclamations, his military 
suspension of habeas corpus, his arbitrary arrests, must 
all be tested by the terms and restrictions of the Con- 
stitution as in time of peace. " The Union as it was, 
the Constitution as it is," was the maxim of the party. 
In the view of these constitutionalists, the Union 
was to be saved only by, through and under the 
Constitution, — nothing more nor less. They idealized 
the Constitution. To them the Constitution was 
identical with the nation. Without it there could be 
no Union. The Constitution gone, the republic is 

1 Pendleton's Resolutions, July 31, 1861, Globe. 



2io THE LIFE OF THADDEUS STEVENS 

dead. The war was for the preservation of the Con- 
stitution and for that alone ; it was against the Consti- 
tution and because it was binding on all, that the 
Southerners were rebels. These conservatives de- 
nounced the anti-slavery advocates as being indifferent 
as to whether or not their policies were in harmony 
with the Constitution, and this fact made the hated 
abolitionists, as they called all anti-slavery men, as 
guilty criminals as the secessionists themselves. 

In the view of this party almost everything that 
the President or Congress proposed or did, for the 
* effective and vigorous prosecution of the war, was 
unconstitutional. Confiscation of slave property was 
unconstitutional; retaining fugitive slaves within our 
lines was unconstitutional; the military emancipation 
of Fremont and Hunter was unconstitutional ; the use 
of slaves as contraband was unconstitutional ; Lin- 
coln's plan of compensated emancipation was 
unconstitutional; enlistment of negro troops was un- 
constitutional; abolition of slavery in the District of 
Columbia was unconstitutional; the prohibition of 
slavery in the territories (with the Dred Scott decision 
still unreversed) was unconstitutional; the Emancipa- 
tion Proclamation was unconstitutional; the draft was 
unconstitutional; the suspension of the writ of habeas 
corpus was unconstitutional ; military arrests were un- 
constitutional ; suspending, or in any way reinstating 
state governments in the South under Federal authority 
was unconstitutional; Lincoln's appointment of mili- 
tary governors and his beginnings of reconstruction 
were unconstitutional. Almost everything that was 
done or attempted in the prosecution of the war from 



THE CONSTITUTION AND THE WAR 21 1 

Lincoln's first call for troops to the final scene at Ap- 
pomattox was denounced as unconstitutional. No 
exercise of power was constitutional except what was 
unmistakably granted by a strict construction of the 
Constitution interpreted as in times of peace. The 
sacred and revered Constitution was to be the standard 
for measuring all acts and policies of war. The war 
had made no difference in the rights and immunities 
due to the seceded states. The Constitution protected 
them still. They were not bound by its provisions in 
the conduct of the war, but their opponents were to 
be restrained from every aggressive act of power not 
clearly within its specific limits. 

This was a fearful handicap for the national gov- 
ernment. Such a policy would have led to a passive 
and harmless war, almost purely defensive in its 
operations on the part of the national government. 
Carried to its logical conclusion, no invasion of the 
Southern States nor subduing of the Southern people 
would have been possible under it, and it is very 
problematical whether the Constitution and the Union 
could have been saved for the South under its opera- 
:ion. It would have left the government inefficient, 
if not absolutely helpless in the face of the Rebellion. 

To this party, to its constitutional views and to all 
)f its ways, Thaddeus Stevens was diametrically op- 
posed. He was its constant and stout antagonist. He 
lerided these sticklers for the Constitution and de- 
lounced them in unsparing terms, speaking of them 
.s " traitors in disguise " or as " sympathizers with the 
ebels," their " apologists and abetters." Against its 
dvocates he used all his powers of ridicule, satire, 



212 THE LIFE OF THADDEUS STEVENS 

invective, and anathema. He sought not to fondle nor 
conciliate them nor to sue for their support. He would 
ride over them and trample them under foot. To 
him they were merely obstacles to the accomplishment 
of the great end in view, — the triumph of the Union 
arms in war. They and he were at the antipodes of 
the political world, and they were not by any means 
tender in their words for one another. 

In opposition to this theoretical and nerveless con- 
stitutionalism, Stevens sought early to establish a legal 
basis for the conduct of the war that would give the 
nation a chance to fight, and in the first discussion on 
slavery and the war 1 he laid down the legal and 
proper premises for the fighting at hand. He brushed 
theories aside, looked at the facts and saw them as 
they were; and he sought a basis of action best calcu- 
lated to bring the result desired. He took the bold 
ground that in the contest for its life the nation was 
not bound by the limitations of the Constitution. The 
war had abrogated the Constitution, not where it was 
respected and could be enforced by ordinary civil 
processes, but with respect to hostile confederated 
states that had rejected and repudiated the Constitu- 
tion, trampled it under foot, and were resisting its 
restoration by organized armies. The people of the 
Confederate States were public belligerent enemies 
and the nation in its effort to overcome them was 
bound only by the laws of war and the law of nations. 
This was the sum and substance of Stevens' legal po- 
sition, and it seemed to be dictated by the plain common 
sense of the situation. 

1 Aug. 2, 1861. 



THE CONSTITUTION AND THE WAR 213 

To this principle, of acting toward the South as a 
belligerent in war, bound only by the laws of war and 
not by the hampering restrictions of the Constitution, 
Stevens adhered strictly and consistently throughout 
the struggle. As a principle of public law for the 
crisis it was the most reasonable, effective, and con- 
sistent position of any public man of his time. It was 
calculated to free the nation from embarrassment and 
to give it efficiency in war. The way was open for 
the application of this principle when Southern bel- 
ligerency was recognized by the declaration of block- 
ade. Stevens did not approve of President Lincoln's 
proclamation of April, 1861, declaring the blockade 
of the Southern ports. He held it to be a mistake. 
He would have repealed the laws making these ports 
ports of entry and then there would have been no need 
of a blockade. A nation has a right to close its own 
ports, but that is not a blockade. If we had thus 
closed our own ports, no nation would then have had 
a right to send vessels there, even though we might 
not have had a ship of war within a hundred miles. 
If the Confederate States created ports of entry, for- 
eign nations could not recognize these ports without 
recognizing the independence of the Confederacy, and 
that would be a cause of war. 

Whether foreign nations would have respected such 
a policy is doubtful. At any rate, by our blockade and 
by the acknowledgment of European powers belliger- 
ency was recognized and the South had become entitled 
to all the rights of war. They were also subject to 
all the rules of war, with no other rights due from 
their belligerent antagonists than these rules accord 






2i 4 THE LIFE OF THADDEUS STEVENS 

them. The Constitution had no longer the least effect 
upon them. " It is idle to tell me," said Stevens, " that 
the obligations of an instrument are binding on one 
party while they are repudiated by the other. Obliga- 
tions to be binding in war must be mutual, equally 
acknowledged, and admitted by all parties. There is 
another principle just as universal : — when parties be- 
come belligerent the war between them abrogates all 
compacts, treaties, and constitutions which may have 
existed between them before the war commenced." 

Such was Stevens' legal basis for the conduct of 
the war. It was announced in the beginning x in re- 
sponse to the argument of George H. Pendleton, of 
Ohio, that only two alternatives were open, — either 
the men now in rebellion are public enemies subject to 
the laws of war or they are citizens of the United 
States subject to the penalties of the law of the Consti- 
tution and likewise entitled to all the benefits and 
guarantees which that instrument prescribes for every 
citizen. If we regard them as in one capacity we 
can not regard them as in the other. We should not 
hold them to be public enemies for one purpose, that is, 
to deprive them of the guarantees which the Consti- 
tution gives them, and still hold them to be citizens in 
order to inflict upon them the penalties of treason, 
which the law prescribes for a citizen. We should 
choose one or the other of these alternatives, and fol- 
low it to its logical and legitimate conclusion. Such 
was Pendleton's argument. 

Stevens did not shrink from the alternatives sug- 
gested. He had no scruples over these distinctions in 

1 August 2, 1861. 






THE CONSTITUTION AND THE WAR 215 

law. He saw clearly the public law in the case. To 
his mind the people of the Confederate States were 
rebels who had incurred the penalties of treason under 
the Constitution, after the success of the war in sub- 
duing them; but during the process of the war for 
their subjection, they were public enemies outside the 
pale of the Constitution. The position was clear and 
logical and Stevens did not hesitate to follow it to 
its conclusion. 

It was a pity that so many men of respectability 
and standing failed to see the folly and absurdity of 
attempting to apply the Constitution to the state of 
war then existing between North and South. 

" I thought the time had come," said Stevens, when 
pleading for the first act of confiscation, " when the 
laws of war were to govern our action ; when constitu- 
tions, if they stood in the way of the laws of war in 
dealing with the enemy, had no right to intervene. 
Who pleads the Constitution against our proposed 
action? Who says the Constitution must come in in 
bar of our action? It is the advocates of rebels who 
have sought to overthrow the Constitution, who repu- 
diate the Constitution and trample it in the dust. Sir, 
these rebels, who have disregarded and set at defiance 
that instrument, are by every rule of municipal and 
international law, estopped from pleading it against our 
action. Who, then, is it that comes to us and says, 
[ You can not do this thing because your Constitution 
does not permit it ' ? The Constitution ! Our Consti- 
tution which you repudiate and trample under foot, for- 
bids it ! Sir, it is an absurdity. There must be a 
party in court to plead it, and that party to be entitled 



216 THE LIFE OF THADDEUS STEVENS 

to plead it in court, must first acknowledge its su- 
premacy or he has no business to be in court at all. 
I repeat, then, that those who bring in this plea here, 
in bar of our action, are the advocates of rebels. 
They are nothing else, whatever they intend. I mean 
it, of course, in a legal sense. I mean they are acting 
in the capacity of counselors-at-law for the rebels, 
speaking for them, not for us who are the plaintiffs 
in this transaction. I deny that they have any right 
to plead at all. I deny that they have any standing in 
court. ... I deny that they can be permitted to come 
here and tell us that we must be loyal to the Consti- 
tution." r 

When he was asked how members of Congress who 
had taken an oath to support the Constitution could 
violate it in their action, whether rebels complain of 
it or not, he replied that they do not violate it when 
they are operating against men who have no rights 
to the benefits of the Constitution. It was interna- 
tional law, not the law of the Constitution that applied 
to the war. — " In the midst of arms laws are silent," 
a law that has been in force from the days of Cicero; 
and " any nation that disregards that law is a poor, 
pusillanimous nation which submits its neck to be 
struck off by the enemy." 

A member 2 interposed an objection. "I under- 
stand," he said, " the gentleman to admit that this bill 3 
is unconstitutional but to defend it and to urge its 
passage on the ground that during the existence of 

1 Cong. Globe, Aug. 2, 1861, p. 414. 

- Mr. Mallory, of Kentucky. 

3 The Confiscation Act of Aug. 6, 1861. 



THE CONSTITUTION AND THE WAR 217 

rebellion Congress has a right to do an unconstitutional 
act." " I say that it is constitutional," replied Stevens, 
" and according to the law of nations in time of war. 
[Laughter.] I admit that if you were in a state of 
peace you could not confiscate the property of any 
citizen, but in time of war you have the right to 
confiscate the property of every rebel. Every measure 
which will enable you to subdue your enemy and tri- 
umph over him is justifiable on your part. If by tak- 
ing from him every dollar of property which he has 
on earth you will weaken his hands you are at liberty 
to fight him in that way." 

This is the identical principle that President Lin- 
coln finally adopted in the exercise of his war powers, 
and which he announced a little more than a year later 
as the basis of his right to make arbitrary arrests and 
to suspend the writ of habeas corpus. Lincoln's course 
in pursuance of this principle, in the matter of arbi- 
trary arrests, may be even more open to criticism and 
objection than was the attitude of Stevens. The latter 
did not hold that the Constitution and the laws might 
be abrogated and disregarded by executive power in 
the Northern States where the laws could be peaceably 
enforced without process of arms. There Stevens' 
war doctrine did not apply. But it applied against 
those who were making war on the Constitution to 
overthrow it. In the Rebel States the Constitution, for 
the period of the war, had ceased to operate, but it was 
in operation and must be respected where no war had 
been made upon it. 

The confiscation, which he favored from the begin- 
ning, followed, not under the Constitution after con- 



218 THE LIFE OF THADDEUS STEVENS 

viction for treason, but by virtue of the laws of war. 
" No individual crime need be proved against the 
owners. The fact of being a belligerent enemy carries 
the forfeiture. This might work a hardship on loyal 
men in the South. But to escape the condition of 
enemies they must change their domicile and leave 
the hostile state." * 

This doctrine that the Constitution, with regard to 
the states in rebellion, had no binding influence and 
no application, Stevens maintained on repeated occa- 
sions during the war. It was not an utterance ex- 
pressed in the heat of partisan debate or on the spur 
of an occasion, but it was his deliberate opinion ex- 
pressed after a careful examination of the law of the 
United States and of nations. When a state of war 
came to be admitted, every obligation previously ex- 
isting between the government and the rebellious 
states, " every treaty, compact, contract, or anything 
else is wholly abrogated and from that moment the 
belligerents act toward each other according to the 
laws of war." The following dialogue brings forth 
clearly Stevens' position : 

Mr. Dunlap : " Are not those seceded states still 
members of this Union, and under the laws of the 
government ? " 

Mr. Stevens: " In my opinion they are not." 

Mr. Dunlap : " Then I would ask, did the ordi- 
nances of secession take them out of the Union? " 

Mr. Stevens : " The ordinances of secession, 
backed by the armed power which made them a bel- 
ligerent nation, did take them, so far as present 

1 Cong. Globe, Jan. 22, 1864. 



THE CONSTITUTION AND THE WAR 219 

operations are concerned, from under the laws of the 
nation." 

Mr. Dunlap: "Are they, then, members of the 
Union?" 

Mr. Stevens : ' They are not, in my judgment." 

Mr. Yeaman : " Does the gentleman hold that the 
ordinance of secession passed in South Carolina was 
legal, and under the Constitution of the United 
States?" 

Mr. Stevens : " I hold that it was an act of treason 
and rebellion." 

Mr. Yeaman : " Did the backing up of these ordi- 
nances of secession by armed force impart to them 
any validity? " 

Mr. Stevens : " I hold that so long as they remain 
in force against us as a belligerent power, and until 
they are conquered, it is in fact an existing opera- 
tion; I will not say anything about its legality. 
[Laughter.] I hold that it is an existing fact and that 
so far from enforcing any laws, you have not the 
power." 1 

His opponents sought to restrict him to a theory of 
the Constitution and of the law as if the war had no 
existence. His mind was too vigorous and assertive 
for such a straight-jacket. Stevens was guided by 
the facts. He was a practical statesman, not a doc- 
trinaire particularist. He had the great qualities of 
the lawyer — not the pettifogging qualities — that en- 
abled him to announce the law that was suitable to the 
momentous and overruling fact of war, and that made 
him impatient with questions of law that were purely 

1 Cong. Globe, Jan. 8, 1863, Vol. 63, pp. 239-240. 



220 THE LIFE OF THADDEUS STEVENS 

theoretical and abstract. To him it was utterly absurd 
to say — as it will seem absurd to the ordinary reader 
to-day — that men in arms might claim the protection 
of the Constitution and laws that were made for loyal 
men, while these armed rebels refuse to obey one of 
those laws or acknowledge their binding effect. He 
wanted a reciprocity of obligation under the Constitu- 
tion, or there should be none acknowledged as binding 
on the part of the national government. 

He assumed the same consistent attitude toward the 
constitutionality of all the anti-slavery measures that 
arose during the progress of the war. While he was 
urging emancipation he referred to the claim that the 
Constitution did not authorize Congress to interfere 
with slavery in the states. That was true only before 
the Constitution had been abrogated by the fact of 
war. But when the Constitution is " repudiated and 
set at defiance by an armed rebellion too powerful to 
be quelled by peaceable means, the Constitution itself 
grants to the President and Congress a supplemental 
power which it is impossible to define because it must 
increase and vary according to the necessity of the 
nation." If it were necessary as a means of saving 
the republic, there was power under the Constitution 
to declare a dictator. Only necessity would justify 
this fearful power, — to snatch the nation from the 
jaws of death. But as the safety of the people was the 
supreme law, rather than that the nation should perish 
he would use it. " Rather than see the nation dis- 
honored by compromise, concession, and submission; 
rather than see the Union dissevered I would do it 
now. Oh, for six months of stern old Jackson ! " 



THE CONSTITUTION AND THE WAR 221 

It will be seen that Stevens' constitutional position,"^ 
or extra-constitutional position, was consistent, 
straightforward, and outspoken. He blinked at noth- 
ing, but he always looked the constitutional issue 
squarely in the face. He made no pretenses and would 
resort to no subterfuges or forced constructions to jus- 
tify a course already predetermined. This is seen still 
more clearly in his attitude toward the admission of 
West Virginia. 

The Constitution clearly provides that no state shall 
be divided without its consent. When Virginia se- 
ceded the people in the western counties of the state, 
wishing to remain loyal to the Union, assumed to 
form a state government and choose state officers, 
and a state legislature. They elected Senators and 
Representatives to Congress who were admitted to 
their seats. They claimed to be the people of Virginia, 
constitutionally competent to give the consent of the 
state to the formation of a new state within the 
borders of the "Old Dominion." This people, having 
given its consent to the division of the old state of 
Virginia, immediately erected itself into the new state 
of West Virginia. Nobody consented except those 
within the limits of the new state. That is, the new 
state consented to the division of the old, and when 
the new state had been admitted according to pre- 
arrangement, Mr. Pierpont, pretending to be the Gov- 
ernor of the state that pretended to be Virginia, moved 
over to Alexandria and kept up the pretense of being 
gubernatorial head of old Virginia, — with an official 
body that Sumner afterward called the " common 
council of Alexandria." As Stevens said after the 



222 THE LIFE OF THADDEUS STEVENS 

war, " All the archives, property and effects of the 
Pierpont government were taken to Richmond in an 
ambulance." This was the government recognized 
during the war as the legitimate, constitutional gov- 
ernment of Virginia, so bound were public men to 
constitutional forms. 

There were distinguished members of Congress who 
sought to find ground in the Constitution for the recog- 
nition of the Pierpont government, and for the process 
by which Virginia was divided and West Virginia 
admitted. But to Stevens, the proceedings, and argu- 
ments based upon them, were all ridiculous and absurd. 
He scorned these fine-spun legal fictions and it was not 
his style to " beat the devil about the bush " in any 
such way. He was opposed to giving seats in the 
House to members from Virginia after the secession 
of that state, a policy that was urged on the plea that 
the little handful of loyal men left there after secession 
were the state of Virginia. " We know," he said, 
" that members have been elected to this House by only 
twenty votes and those cast under the guns of a fort. 
To say that those gentlemen represent any district is 
mere mockery." * Much less did they represent a part 
of an organized state. 

Stevens was willing to accomplish the end in view, 
— 'the dismemberment of Virginia and the admission 
of the new state, — the sufficient ground for the act 
being that it would weaken the enemy and help the 
national cause. However, he recognized but one legal 
ground for the proceeding. Some of his colleagues 
voted against the admission of West Virginia because 



1 Globe, Dec. 2, 1861. 






THE CONSTITUTION AND THE WAR 223 

they thought its formation was unconstitutional. 
Others attempted to defend it on constitutional ground. 
Either position Stevens looked upon as weak and inane 
in a Union war man. Stevens was ready to vote for 
the admission of West Virginia because he did not 
think the Constitution applied to a state in arms 
against the government of the Union. He was not 
afraid nor ashamed to ignore the Constitution which 
the rebels were ignoring, in order to do what was 
best for his cause and for their defeat. 

" We may admit West Virginia," he said, " not by 
any provisions of the Constitution but under our ab- 
solute power which the laws of war give us. I shall 
vote for this bill upon that theory and that alone ; for 
I will not stultify myself by supposing that we have 
any warrant in the Constitution for this proceeding. 

"' Sir, it is but mockery, in my judgment, to tell me 
that the Legislature of Virginia has ever consented to 
this division. About 200,000 out of 1,250,000 people 
have held a convention and elected a legislature which 
has assented to the division. But before all this was 
done the state had a regular organization and a con- 
stitution under which it acted. By a convention of 
a large majority of the people of that state they 
changed their constitution and changed their relation 
to the federal government from that of one of its 
members to that of secession. This is treason, but 
so far as the state corporation was concerned, it was 
a valid act and governed the state. The majority of 
the people of Virginia was the state of Virginia, al- 
though individuals had committed treason. Their 
legislature which called the seceding convention was 



224 THE LIFE OF THADDEUS STEVENS 

the legislature of the state. The legislature was 
disloyal and traitorous, but the state as a state was 
bound by their acts. Not so individuals. They are re- 
sponsible to the general government, whether the state 
decrees treason or not. Governor Letcher, elected by 
a majority of the votes of Virginia, is the Governor 
of Virginia, — a traitorous Governor of a traitorous 
state. A small number of the citizens of Virginia — 
the people in West Virginia — assembled together, dis- 
approved of the acts of Virginia, and with the utmost 
self-complacency called themselves Virginia. Is it not 
ridiculous ? " x 

This seemed more straightforward than to stretch 
the Constitution by a forced and fictitious construc- 
tion while claiming to respect its provisions. To a 
layman it seemed like better law, better sense, sounder 
morality and sounder political science. 

This view of the character of the state and the effect 
of secession Stevens maintained consistently on all oc- 
casions. It was on this ground that he would apply 
confiscation, that is, as against enemies in war. If the 
Rebel States were still in the Union and under the 
Constitution, as some theorists contended, he saw no 
reason why they should not elect the next President 
of the United States. If the rebels decline to vote, 
then one hundred loyal men who, as his legal oppo- 
nents contended, still continue to be " the state," 
" might meet and choose the state's share of electors. 
The few loyal men around Fortress Monroe or Nor- 
folk, or Alexandria, and a few ' cleansed patches ' in 
Louisiana, being one thousandth part of the state, 

1 Cong. Globe j Dec. 9, 1862. 



THE CONSTITUTION AND THE WAR 225 

might choose electors for the whole state." It was 
such reasoning that seemed to Stevens like a mockery 
of constitutional law and political science. Will any 
reputable authority on the political science and the 
Constitution of the American commonwealth deny the 
soundness of his position? 

" It is idle to say that townships and counties and 
parishes within such states are at peace while the 
states by acknowledged majorities have declared for 
war. It is still more idle to say that individuals within 
the belligerent territory, because they were opposed to 
secession and were loyal to the parent government, are 
the state, though only five per cent, of the people, and 
hence that the " states " are not at war. This is ig- 
noring the fundamental principle of democratic re- 
publics, which is that majorities must rule, that the 
voice of the majority, however abandoned and wicked, 
is the voice of the state. If the minority choose to 
stay with the misgoverned territory they are its citizens 
and subject to its conditions. True, in dealing per- 
sonally great difference is made between the innocent 
and the guilty. But how can it be said that the states 
are not at war? 

" The idea that a few loyal citizens are the state 
and may override and govern the disloyal millions, I 
am not able to comprehend. If ten men fit to save 
Sodom can elect a Governor and other state officers 
against more than a million Sodomites in Virginia, 
then the democratic doctrine that the majority shall 
rule is discarded and ignored. Not the quality but 
the number of votes have the right to govern. In 
South Carolina a rebel's vote weighs just as much as 



226 THE LIFE OF THADDEUS STEVENS 

a loyal voter's. It is mere mockery to say that, ac- 
cording to any principle of popular government, a 
tithe of the resident inhabitants of an organized state 
can change its form and carry on government because 
they are more holy or loyal." x 

In an arraignment of Stevens' position, Honorable 
Francis P. Blair, of Missouri, contended that state- 
hood in the South was indestructible, that the Con- 
federate States were like Missouri whose territory 
had been overrun by rebel armies but whose state 
organization, with the majority of votes and coercive 
power behind it, had remained loyal to the Union. 
According to Blair the Southern States were merely 
under duress. All that was necessary was to drive 
out the rebel power that was holding their governments 
in restraint, and recognize and sustain the loyal ele- 
ment as the state. This duress had not extinguished 
the legitimate local sovereignty nor the supreme sov- 
ereignty of the general government. Blair claimed 
that Stevens in recognizing the Southern States as 
subsisting states, as perfect now as before the Rebel- 
lion, and that in regarding the Confederate States as 
a separate belligerent power carrying on a legitimate 
war, — in holding this position Blair contended that 
Stevens had recognized secession as " absolutely and 
with more distinctness than ever Calhoun had ven- 
tured to urge it." " In this position," said Blair, " no 
man North or South ever asserted the secession cause 
so boldly in the forum as the gentleman from Pennsyl- 
vania." and he asserted that Stevens had treated with 
scorn the idea that states held in duress by the rebel 

1 Globe, Jan. 22, 1864. 






THE CONSTITUTION AND THE WAR 227 

power have a right to look to our laws and Constitu- 
tion for protection. This " secession-abolition-abso- 
lute-conquest doctrine," said Blair, was " in defiance 
of national and state constitutions, the law of the civ- 
ilized world and of all humanity." 

Stevens replied with vigor to Blair, whose speech, 
he said, " contained the distilled virus of the Copper- 
head." Blair had made a false statement of Stevens' 
position. " If the armies of the Confederate States 
should overrun a loyal state and hold it in duress, that 
state would have a right to appeal to the Constitution 
for protection. But a state which by a free majority 
of its voters has thrown off its allegiance to the Con- 
stitution and holds itself in duress by its own armies, 
is estopped from claiming any protection under the 
Constitution. To say that such a state is within the 
pale of the Union so as to claim protection under its 
constitution and laws is but the raving of a madman." 

" To escape the consequence of my argument he 
[Blair] denies that the Confederate States have been 
acknowledged as belligerents or have established and 
maintained independent government dc facto. Such 
assurance would deny that there is a sun in heaven. 
They have a Congress in which eleven states are repre- 
sented ; they have at least 300,000 soldiers in the field ; 
their pickets are almost within sight of Washington. 
They have ships of war on the ocean destroying hun- 
dreds of our ships, and our government and the gov- 
ernments of Europe acknowledge and treat them as 
privateers, not as pirates. There is no reasoning 
against such impudent denials. 

" But it is said the Constitution does not allow them 



228 THE LIFE OF THADDEUS STEVENS 

to go out of the Union. True, and in going out they 
committed a crime for which we are now warring 
against them. The law forbids a man to rob or mur- 
der, yet robbery and murder exist de facto. Blair 
had said that those who declare the states outlawed 
to the Union preach the doctrine of secession as much 
as Jefferson Davis. Does the man," asked Stevens, 
" who declares that murder and larceny exist give 
countenance to those crimes ? The one is as reasonable 
as the other. If the fiction of equity courts that what- 
ever ought to be shall be considered as existing, — if 
this is true, then the rebel states are in the Union. 
If the naked facts, palpable to every eye, attested by 
many a bloody battle-field, and recorded by every day's 
hostile legislation, both in Washington and Richmond, 
are to prevail, then the rebellious states are no more 
in the Union, in fact, than the loyal states are in the 
Confederate States. Nor should they ever be treated 
so until they repent and are rebaptized into the na- 
tional Union." 1 

The seceded states had, de facto, committed the 
)( crime of secession. That no one could deny. They, 
therefore, stood in that attitude as outlaws and aliens 
from the protection of the Constitution. They were 
a belligerent, occupying the position of a foreign na- 
tion, as far as their rights under the Constitution were 
concerned. But, when conquered, they would be in a 
worse condition than a foreign nation, since they were 
traitors to their government, and, as such, they must 
be pursued and punished to their utter subjugation. 2 

1 Globe, May 2, 1864, p. 2042. 

2 Stevens' critics sought to make it appear that his position 



THE CONSTITUTION AND THE WAR 229 

Such was Stevens' constitutional position in the 
conduct of the war. This position he assumed at the 
start when he was called on to meet the problem of 
war, and he maintained it to the close when he had 
to meet the problem of reconstruction. In maintaining 
his ground he never wavered nor doubted; and, year 
by year, he had the satisfaction of seeing his party 
advancing steadily to his position. On May 2, 1864, 
Stevens congratulated the country that the House had 
recently passed a resolution recognizing that " the war 
had been brought on by a wicked and wholly unjusti- 
fiable rebellion, and those engaged in aiding or en- 
couraging it are public enemies and should be treated 
as such." In this the House had asserted the funda- 
mental principle for which Stevens had contended. 
The consequences which he sought to establish would 
follow as a corollary. 

Stevens knew full well that, in voicing the doctrine 
that the Constitution was suspended by the fact of war, 
he had not been all the while speaking the sentiment of 
his party or of the administration. His position had >' 
been too radical for his party. But Stevens was sat- - 
isfied to go ahead and point out the way. He was > 
content and brave enough to stand out boldly and alone 

was similar to that of those who were so friendly to the South 
that they would recognize the Confederacy as an independent 
power, de jure; that, as Stevens expressed it, "these states be 
permitted to remain a de facto secession power without punish- 
ment; that this government should extend to them the right 
hand of fellowship in the shape of negotiation, withdraw its 
armies and allow them to maintain the attitude which, through 
their great crime, they had acquired." Globe, April n, 1864, p. 
1534. It is needless to say that it was only by the pretenses of 
partisanship that attempt could be made to assimilate these two 
positions. They were as wide apart as the poles. 



230 THE LIFE OF THADDEUS STEVENS 

for a doctrine which, as he believed, was the only 
sound and consistent position on which the war could 
be successfully conducted, and which, as he predicted, 
his colleagues and colaborers for the Union would, 
in time, find it necessary to adopt. He now had the 
grim satisfaction of seeing this very thing come about, 
and he might very properly and reasonably have re- 
called his personal vaunt of the year before when he 
reminded his party associates that he had been merely 
going a few steps ahead of them in this matter. 

" But," he said, " I have never been so far ahead, with 
the exception of the principles I now enunciate, but that the 
members of the party have overtaken me and gone ahead; 
and they will overtake me again and go with me before this 
infamous and bloody rebellion is ended. They will find that 
they can not execute the Constitution in the seceding states : 
that it is a total nullity there, and that this war must be car- 
ried on upon principles wholly independent of it. They 
will come to the conclusion that the adoption of the meas- 
ures I advocated at the outset of the war (the arming of 
the negroes) is the only way left on earth in which these 
rebels can be exterminated. I do not now ask gentlemen 
to endorse my views, nor do I speak for anybody but myself; 
but in order that I may have some credit for sagacity I 
ask that gentlemen will write this down in their memories. 
It will not be two years before they call it up, or before 
they will adopt my views, or adopt the other alternative of a 
disgraceful submission by this side of the country." x 

Stevens was right. Congress and the country had 
adopted his views. The object of the war was to 
subdue the Rebellion. Whatever means the nation 
deemed wise and effective in promoting that end were 

1 Globe, May 2, 1864. 



THE CONSTITUTION AND THE WAR 231 

justifiable, if they were not contrary to the laws of •>' 
war and of humanity. This was the sum total of 
Stevens' teaching on the government's power in war. 

A writer in the London Times 1 held that all the 
acts of President Lincoln, in suspending the habeas 
corpus, in committing arbitrary arrests, in emanci- 
pating the slaves, in declaring a blockade of Southern 
ports — all these acts, and many others, in letter and 
in spirit, were excusable on one ground alone, ground 
which the Democrats rejected and which the Republi- 
cans were not bold enough to stand upon, namely, 
" that the states of the South were an alien enemy and 
that those citizens within the jurisdiction of the United 
States who aid and abet them are amenable to the 
customs and usages of all governments toward treason- 
able subjects." 

It would have been only fair in this writer to admit 
that there was at least one Republican leader who was 
bold enough to occupy that ground, the ground on 
which alone the war powers exercised by President 
Lincoln are to be defended and justified. That ad- 
vanced leader was Stevens. He saw clearly, from 
the outbreak of the war, the weakness and the fallacy 
of the assumption put forward by certain legalists 
and doctrinaire constitutionalists that the Constitution 
was the criterion by which to conduct the war. He 
saw how utterly vain it was to try to reconcile the uses 
of martial law with the principles of the Constitution. 

It is difficult to understand how rational men 
prompted by patriotic motives could hold to the doc- 
trine announced by the Peace Democrats, namely, 

1 November 13, 1862. 



232 THE LIFE OF THADDEUS STEVENS 

that the nation could use no powers in the war except 
those specifically enumerated in the Constitution. It 
was the height of absurdity. Either such men were 
arrant fools or they were unwilling to see the Union 
preserved by war. Certain it is, that the application 
of their doctrine would have made it impossible to 
prosecute the war with any effect, and the burden of 
evidence tends to prove that that was what they really 
desired. 

On the other hand, the doctrine of Stevens gave 
the nation fighting strength and renewed life, and it 
came to be the doctrine of all who were really desirous 
of prosecuting the war in earnest. The doctrine was 
that the Southern States in the war were outside the 
pale of the Constitution from first to last. Neither 
combatant in the struggle, in its conduct toward the 
other, was bound by its restrictions. The Constitution 
could not operate in the rebel states. Yet the acts 
authorized by martial law were not to be regarded as 
unconstitutional. The Constitution recognized martial 
law and all the laws of war, but the laws of war never 
operate while the Constitution and municipal laws pre- 
vail. Nor do the Constitution and civil laws operate 
when the laws of war prevail. The Constitution calls 
for the laws of war and leads them forth to take its 
place when and where it can no longer maintain its 
power ; then it retires and leaves the theater of war to 
the laws of nations. They are exclusive in their em- 
pire. There can be no mixed reign of the laws of war 
and of the Constitution. 1 

While this doctrine was finally accepted for war 
1 Speech of Stevens in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, 1863. 



THE CONSTITUTION AND THE WAR 233 

purposes by all wings of the war party who were sin- 
cerely desirous of seeing the war successful, yet, with 
strange inconsistency and lack of boldness, when it 
came to a question of amending the Constitution or 
of reconstructing the Union, an effort, or pretense, was 
made to apply the Constitution in states where seces- 

, sion and war had abrogated it and made it a nullity. 

j I do not refer to the laudable effort to restore the Con- 
stitution to local state governments wherein war had 
stricken it down; but to the pretense that it was in 
force where, by reason of actual conditions, it could 
not be enforced. Lincoln and many of the Union 
party seemed strangely possessed with the idea that 
with reference to certain civil and constitutional rights 

1 and privileges, the states that were at war with the 

I Union were to be treated as if secession and war had 
not occurred. They proposed still to regard the states 
of the Confederacy as states of the Union. They 
were to be like all the other states for voting purposes 
when it came to the fundamental act of remodeling the 
organic law of the nation. If this premise were to 
be conceded, that the Constitution was in force every- 
where and in all respects just as if war had not oc- 
curred, then there was no way to break the force of 
the argument of the Peace Democrats voiced by Pen- 
dleton. There were thirty-five states. Twenty- 
seven were necessary to ratify the liberty amendment. 
There were nineteen Free States. " Suppose," asked 
Pendleton, " you get them all, — where do you get 
the others? Count, also, Maryland, Missouri, West 
Virginia, even Delaware, and you have but twenty- 
three. Where do you get the other four? If you 



234 THE LIFE OF THADDEUS STEVENS 

intend to make up this number by the addition of new 
states you will have to add sixteen, three-fourths of 
which, twelve, will be the proper proportion for the 
number added. Will the gentlemen call on the South- 
ern States to furnish the requisite number ? There the 
military authorities were already well ashamed of the 
farce enacted a short time since and were about to 
get rid of the pretense of a government which a little 
while ago had been set up. If these states are to vote 
in their present condition it would be a broad farce 
if it were not a wicked fraud." 

It was exactly so. It partook of the nature both 
of a farce and a fraud to regard the states of the 
belligerent Confederacy as constitutional states of the 
Union. Yet those who were responsible for the con- 
duct of the government were so wedded to this mis- 
chievous abstraction; they consented to be so 
handicapped by this useless and embarrassing theory, 
that they would not consent to proclaim liberty through- 
out the land to all the inhabitants thereof without 
acting as if it were first necessary to the validity of the 
amendment to obtain the consent of a number of the 
Confederate States, the same as if they had never 
broken with the Union and made war on the Con- 
stitution. Their process was but an empty form. 
The Confederate States necessary to the amendment 
were to be made to act under pretended civil govern- 
ments set up and entirely supported, if not directed, 
by the military arm of the national power. 1 

1 The eight Confederate States that were finally counted for 
the ratification of the amendment were the presidential states 
that were set up by the military power of Lincoln and Johnson. 



THE CONSTITUTION AND THE WAR 235 

Furthermore in order to secure the necessary 
twenty-seven states a new state had to be admitted to 
the Union for the express purpose of ratifying the 
amendment. Nevada was admitted for no other rea- 
son, a state which, even after the lapse of half a cen- 
tury, has not, and may never have, one- fourth of 
the population deemed essential to statehood. And 
this unnecessary admission of a " rotten borough," 
with a power in the United States Senate equal to that 
of the most populous state, was brought about only by 
recourse to a most questionable political morality, 
namely, the purchase of congressional support by of- 
ficial patronage. Mr. Charles A. Dana, the distin- 
guished journalist, is authority for the statement that 
President Lincoln authorized the offer of twenty thou- 
sand dollars (or patronage to that amount), to a Dem- 
ocratic Congressman, to secure his vote for the bill ad- 
mitting Nevada, so anxious was the President to pro- 
mote the passage and ratification of the thirteenth 
amendment. 1 

No one supposes that Stevens was more scrupulous 
than Lincoln in the employment of means to reach his 
end. But his doctrine on the war and the Constitu- 
tion obviated the alleged necessity of a resort to such 
embarrassing, not to say immoral, indirection. It en- 
abled him to go more directly and more honestly to his 
end. How much simpler and easier, how much 
sounder in common sense, law, and political morality 
was Stevens' method of bringing about the adoption of 
the thirteenth amendment! Indeed, it may be said 
that there was no answer to the constitutional doctrine 

1 Chas. A. Dana, Recollections of the Civil War, pp. 175-178. 






236 THE LIFE OF THADDEUS STEVENS 

of Pendleton except the answer of Stevens. But 
Stevens' answer was convincing and sufficient. It was 
that the Constitution was not in force for those states 
that had consented to its overthrow; that the states 
that had rejected the Constitution and were making 
war upon it were no part of the amending power. 
There was not the slightest obligation to consult them 
in determining the organic law of the nation, — there 
was no more reason for consulting them than for con- 
sulting the states of the German Empire. Though the 
national authority might rightfully be asserted over 
them, yet from the point of view of their rights and 
privileges or of their powers in the Union, they were 
non-existent as states. They ought not to have been 
consulted, and three-fourths of the states then loyal 
to the Union and represented in Congress were suffi- 
cient to ratify and legalize the new amendment. 

If that doctrine had been assented to in the first place 
the way out in rebuilding the Union and the Constitu- 
tion would have been easy and direct. 
> Better than any other man of his time, Thaddeus 
" Stevens saw the proper relation of the war to this con- 
tention about the Constitution. Toward those who 
forced, or accepted, the gage of battle and who appealed 
to the issue of war, the law and fate of war should 
have been applied. Their civil and political rights 
guaranteed by the Constitution no longer existed. It 
was a simple and natural conclusion, and Stevens was 
determined that the Constitution should not be ap- 
pealed to, as some sought continually to do, merely to 
embarrass, to obstruct, and to defeat the successful 
prosecution of the war. 



THE CONSTITUTION AND THE WAR 237 

But the ordinary minds in Congress were so con- 
ventional, so unoriginal, so bound by conservatism 
and tradition, that they could not break away from 
the " Constitution and the Union " as they had always 
known them in years gone by. A statesman is gov- -' 
erned by his circumstances, and the mighty changes 
that had come in the circumstances of the states, which ' 
smaller men were unwilling to take note of, were the 
controlling and decisive factor in the mind of Stevens. 
He was a leader in a revolutionary period where men 
of boldness were needed to lead against prevailing 
opinions that brought the people to a supine and help- 
less constitutionalism. His disregard of the Constitu- 
tion was a statesmanlike and noble contempt for the 
restrictions of a parchment that stood in the way of his 
country's realizing its highest moral ideals, — liberty, 
equality, union. He was dealing with living forces and 
facts, not with abstract questions of law or speculative 
constitutional phrases. The nation could neither go 
back to the old paths nor stand still amid the dangers 
confronting it, and in such a crisis it was the part 
of a real leader to press forward without regard to 
squeamish scruples about the Constitution. The Con- 
stitution was a means, not an end, and Stevens was 
large enough and bold enough to put the Constitution 
in its place, and to keep it from being lugged in out 
of place by a set of sentimental theorizers whose leader- 
ship would have brought the nation to impotency and 
defeat. He rightly insisted that the Constitution be 
kept out of the way of the nation in its struggle at 
arms for the national life. Whether the Union came 
to a dictatorship or the rebels were brought to exile and 



238 THE LIFE OF THADDEUS STEVENS 

extermination, he would stand to the end for the life 
of the nation in the triumph of the Union, and to him, 
in the conduct of the war, the Constitution was but a 
lifeless and worthless parchment until the issue of war 
was determined. 

But for such men in times of great political crises 
there would be no political triumphs and achievements 
worth commemorating in history. It was in real noble- 
ness of soul that he could say, a year before the strug- 
gle ended and before Congress and the country were 
ready to accept the immortal amendment that guaran- 
teed freedom to all beneath the flag, " I have lived to 
see the triumph of principles which, although I had full 
faith in their ultimate success, I did not expect to wit- 
ness. If Providence will spare me a little longer, until 
this government shall be so reconstructed that the foot 
of a slave can never again tread upon the soil of the 
republic, I shall be content to accept any lot that may 
await me." * 

1 Globe, May 2, 1864. 



CHAPTER XI 

WAYS AND MEANS IN THE WAR; THE GREENBACK 

TX 7HEN Lincoln as President-elect was engaged in 
" * making up his Cabinet, Stevens was prominently 
considered for the position of Attorney-General. 
Simon Cameron, also of Pennsylvania, was a candidate 
for a Cabinet appointment, and when Lincoln invited 
Cameron to the head of the War Department, Stev- 
ens' ambition was disappointed. Stevens was not 
pleased at being set aside for a man with whom he was 
not friendly, and he indulged in some caustic criticism 
of the Cabinet, by saying that it was composed of " an 
assortment of rivals whom the President appointed 
from courtesy, one stump-speaker from Indiana, and 
two representatives of the Blair family." * 

Stevens was destined to play a larger role in the 
course of the war than he would have done as Attor- 
ney-General. On July 4, 1861, the new Congress (the 
Thirty-seventh) met in extraordinary session at the 
call of President Lincoln. Stevens became the recog- 
nized leader of the House on the floor, as Chairman of 
the Committee on Ways and Means. This committee 
then performed the combined functions now belonging 
to the two most important committees of the House, 
the Committee on Ways and Means and the Commit- 

1 Blaine's Tiventy Years in Congress, Vol. I, p. 286. 

239 



240 THE LIFE OF THADDEUS STEVENS 

tee on Appropriations. On this committee rested the 
burdens and duties of providing the funds for carrying 
on the war and of appropriating these funds to the 
various needs. To it were referred all measures of 
public finance, all appropriations for the army and 
navy and for all departments of the government, all 
tax bills, all loan bills, all coinage bills. No greater 
task ever devolved on a Committee of the House. It 
embraced some of the weightiest considerations ever 
brought into discussion within the councils of the gov- 
ernment, including matters of great moment and peril 
in the crisis through which the country was passing, 
for it was quite true that the problem of success in the 
war was a problem of money. 

The financial history of the Civil War is a subject so 
large that only its prominent features can be con- 
sidered here. It divides itself for the most part into 
four heads, — taxation, loans, currency, and banking. 

Taxation and banking may be left on one side for 
the present, for the sake of continuity of attention to 
the important and greatly controverted subjects of 
loans and currency. 

It is doubtful whether in the history of any people, 
a national debt was ever contracted so rapidly as was 
that of the United States during the Civil War. On 
July, i, i860, a few months before secession began, 
the debt of the United States was about $64,000,000, 
two years later it was $524,000,000; within three 
years it was $1,100,000,000; within four years (July 
I, 1864) it was $1,800,000,000, while by August 31, 
1865, the national debt of the United States stood 
at the enormous aggregate of $2,845,000,000. The 



WAYS AND MEANS IN THE WAR 241 

cost of the war was scarcely at any time under $30,- 
000,000 a month ; at times it was as high as $90,000,- 
000 a month, and on the average for the four years of 
the war it was $60,000,000 a month, or $2,000,000 a 
day. The expenditures of the government during the 
fiscal years 1863 to 1865 were more than the entire 
expenditures of the national government from the 
foundation of the nation to the outbreak of the Civil 
War. In the space of four years it was necessary for 
the government to increase its revenue by loans and 
taxes from $65,000,000 to $960,000,000, from 2 per 
cent, of the gross product of the nation to 26 per cent, 
of that product. 1 During the last year of the war the 
government raised more than $1,000,000,000, half 
by loans and half by taxes, "one of the greatest 
achievements in finance that history records." 2 By 
July 1, 1865, the treasury had raised in war loans $2,- 
000,000,000 more than the national treasury had ever 
received from loans and revenues combined in all the 
previous years of its history. By the end of the war 
the annual interest charge on the national debt for 
which provision had to be made in annual revenue, 
had reached the enormous sum of $150,000,000, an 
annual burden of interest payment that was almost 
twice as large as the whole original debt of the nation, 
a burden that had almost staggered America and caused 
threats of repudiation when Alexander Hamilton was 
called on to grapple with the problem of establishing 
the public credit. 

These figures and comparisons may serve to give one 

1 Adams, D. C, Public Finance, p. 535. 
2 E. H. Derby, Atlantic Monthly, Oct. 1868. 



242 THE LIFE OF THADDEUS STEVENS 

some idea of the stupendous character of our civil con- 
flict and of the fiscal problems of Congress in this pe- 
riod. Such financial burdens had never been heard of 
or dreamed of before. Men were altogether unused to 
thinking in such terms or facing such trials of the na- 
tional faith. If the burdens had been foreseen at the 
beginning of the conflict, the prospect might have ap- 
palled the stoutest heart. 

At the opening of the struggle, July 4, 1861, Secre- 
tary Chase submitted his financial plan. Lincoln's ad- 
ministration inherited an empty treasury and an im- 
paired credit. When, during the closing years of 
Buchanan's administration, the United States was com- 
pelled to borrow to meet an approaching deficit, its 
securities were bought in the market at eighty-nine 
cents on the dollar. When Congress met in extra ses- 
sion there was not money enough in the treasury to pay 
members for their services. 

In submitting his financial plan to Congress in July, 
1 86 1, Secretary Chase stated that the financial problem 
to be solved was " that of apportioning loans and taxes 
in a proper manner." This proposition was sound 
enough, but the prime financial mistake of the war came 
here at the outset in not starting in with positive and 
ample measures of taxation. Credit is based on 
revenue, and it is one of the maxims of public finance 
that the increased use of credit in meeting war emer- 
gencies should always be accompanied by correspond- 
ingly increased taxation. Chase proposed to raise 
from taxes only enough to pay the interest on the public 
debt and the ordinary expenses of the government in 
time of peace. No war taxes were proposed ; the extra 




E COLLECTION OF ROBERT DCSTER 



Salmon P. Chase, 1808-1873. 

Secretary of the Treasury, IS6I-IS64. 



WAYS AND MEANS IN THE WAR 243 

expenses of the war were to be met by loans. Thus, 
the government started out to rely on borrowing to 
provide ways and means of waging war. Secretary 
Chase estimated that $320,000,000 would be needed 
for the ensuing fiscal year, only $80,000,000 of which 
was to be provided by taxation, merely enough 
for the peace expenses and the interest on the increas- 
ing loans. On July 17th, Stevens' committee reported 
a loan bill authorizing the Secretary to use the credit 
of the government in borrowing $250,000,000, and 
his bill passed the House without more than an hour's 
consideration, so prompt and ready were the repre- 
sentatives of the people to respond to the call of the 
treasury and to furnish the sinews of war. 

Secretary Chase appealed to the associated banks of 
New York, Boston, and Philadelphia for loans. A 
loan arrangement was speedily effected by which the 
banks were to advance to the treasury $50,000,000 
immediately in exchange for treasury notes bearing 7.3 
per cent, interest, running for three years. The banks 
were given the option of taking a second $50,000,000 
of the loan by October 15th and a third fifty by Decem- 
ber 15th. When the loan was arranged for, the banks 
had a specie reserve of only $63,000,000, barely 
enough to meet the first instalment. They hoped to 
replenish their coin reserve by selling to the public 
the government securities for cash and by the govern- 
ment's disbursements for war supplies. It was 
supposed that the coin restored to the channels of trade 
by government payments would flow naturally and 
steadily back into the banks. The public should buy 
the treasury notes through the banks, the government 



244 THE LIFE OF THADDEUS STEVENS 

should keep paying out specie from the subtreasury, 
and the people should keep on depositing their coin in 
the banks. If this chain worked smoothly and the 
banks could collect specie as rapidly as they paid it over 
to the government, they could continue to supply the 
treasury indefinitely with funds. This was the plan, 
but if a link in the operation broke, if for any reason 
the coin did not return to the banks, suspension of 
specie payments would be inevitable, and the Secre- 
tary's loan policy would collapse. 

The scheme rested on mutual confidence among the 
people, the banks, and the government. If distrust set 
in; or if the burden of demand from increasing debt 
and credit mounted too suddenly and too high to be 
sustained on the narrow basis of the little specie that 
was in the country ; if the government failed to pursue 
a policy in the interest of the banks; or if the banks 
doubted, or sought to discount, the guarantees of the 
government, — failure of the plan was certain to fol- 
low. When the banks came to take the third loan in- 
stalment of $50,000,000 and the Secretary had to sub- 
stitute for short time treasury notes 6 per cent, bonds at 
a discount of more than 10 per cent., realizing less than 
$45,000,000 on the $50,000,000 loan, ultimate failure 
of the plan should have been apparent. Confidence 
was waning, seemingly on the part of the banks, and 
with waning confidence in public credit it was only a 
question of time when specie payment would have 
to be suspended. 

Critics of Secretary Chase have charged him with 
raising the first obstacle to the maintenance of this 
circle of specie payments because of his strict interpre- 



WAYS AND MEANS IN THE WAR 245 

tation of the law of August 5, 1861, amending the 
Loan Act of July 17th. This law, it is claimed, was in- 
tended to relax the subtreasury system by permitting 
the Secretary to deposit the money obtained on the 
loans " in solvent specie-paying banks," instead of with- 
drawing the whole amount of the loan from the banks 
to be locked up in the subtreasury. The banks de- 
sired the Secretary to permit them to credit the United 
States with a deposit equal to the amount of their 
loan, against which the treasury might draw as it had 
occasion. But Secretary Chase thought that the law 
required him not to leave the government specie with 
the banks and accept bank bills or book credit instead. 
In addition to this embarrassment to the banks, the 
Secretary used demand notes in making public pay- 
ments. Fifty million of these notes had been issued 
and they were receivable for public dues, and they, 
therefore, never depreciated. Since these notes were 
in circulation the banks would receive less gold in 
deposits, having to receive to a certain extent the de- 
mand notes instead, and thus they would be less able 
to keep their loan agreement with the government. 

The real causes of the outcome are not difficult to 
see. One was the fact that in his first annual report in 
December, 1861, Secretary Chase still failed to pro- 
pose adequate war taxation. That important policy, 
so necessary to the maintenance of the public credit 
in the face of increasing obligations, was neglected. 
The Secretary still seemed to be under the delusion 
that the war would end before the lapse of another 
year and that temporary provisions and makeshifts 
might be relied upon. In addition to this the Trent 






246 THE LIFE OF THADDEUS STEVENS 

Affair had produced a serious situation in our foreign 
relations, and war was threatened with England. The 
formidable character of the Rebellion was apparent to 
wise observers, and both at home and abroad the war 
situation was alarming. The effect of the increased 
uncertainty and scare upon the sensitive financial nerve 
of the country became quickly apparent. The banks 
could not sell the government securities, on a declin- 
ing public credit, which they held in large quantities, 
except at a sacrifice; the public not only failed to de- 
posit its coin in the banks, but began a positive and 
alarming withdrawal of deposits; and the specie re- 
serve in the banks dwindled at the rate of nearly a 
million a day. 1 

It was all outgo and no income. The inevitable re- 
sult followed, — an event of prime importance in the 
financial .history of the war — namely, the suspension 
of specie payments by the banks, on December 30, 1861. 
The government, too, as a matter of course, suspended 
coin payments. The financial prop had given way and 
by January 1, 1862, the fiscal system established be- 
tween the treasury and the banks had collapsed and 
Secretary Chase was at a loss what to do or in what 
direction to turn in the crisis. It is doubtful if any 
minister of finance ever faced a graver dilemma. 2 

1 The coin reserve in the banks fell from $50,000,000 to $43,- 
000,000 from December 14th to 28th. 

2 The holders of the " convertible bank currency," which the 
banks had been so accustomed to applaud, could not now get 
the gold which they had deposited and which of right belonged 
to them. Nor could the government get the gold, according to 
the arrangement previously made witli the banks, for then, as 
Mr. James Gallatin, one of their leading spokesmen, said, it 
would all "be expended and hoarded by a few people." So the 
banks coolly kept the gold in their vaults. See address of James 



WAYS AND MEANS IN THE WAR 247 

The situation came about, not for the trivial reasons 
alleged by the critics of Secretary Chase; that is, not 
because of minor errors or incidental rulings of the 
Secretary, but rather because of unexpected military 
reverses, foreign complications, appalling increase in 
expenditures, and grave doubt as to the outcome of 
the war. Even failure to resort to adequate taxation, 
serious as the error was, was a minor circumstance in 
causing diminished confidence in public securities, in 
the face of the expenses, failures, disasters and uncer- 
tainties of the war. 

In the financial crisis that faced the country in Jan- 
uary, 1862, there was need of bold and intelligent lead- 
ership. The Secretary of the Treasury had not been 
trained to grapple with the problems that now con- 
fronted him. The stupendous nature of the task was 
enough to cause dismay. Still under the delusion that 
the war would last but a few more months, Chase pre- 
ferred to rely on short loans at a high rate rather than 
resort to heavy taxes, which he thought would be sure 
to excite popular discontent. He had calculated that 
the meager increase of taxes that he proposed would 
produce $90,000,000, but now his revised estimate of 
expenditures called for $214,000,000 more than he had 
estimated six months before, and to meet the pressing 
need he urged another immediate loan of $200,000,000. 

The Secretary, thus facing a deficit of $214,000,000, 
had also to reckon with the need of the coming year, 
estimated at $475,000,000. Gold and silver were no 
longer money. They were out of circulation and could 

Gallatin, Bankers' Magazine, February, 1S62, cited in The Cur- 
rency Question, by George B. Butler, New York, 1864. 



248 THE LIFE OF THADDEUS STEVENS 

not be depended on as currency. They were commodi- 
ties of trade, articles of export and import. The coun- 
try was without a national currency. The only 
currency of the country was the uncertain, vacillating, 
and discredited currency of the state banks. These 
banks could not pay coin on their paper. The hoard- 
ing of the precious metals, or the export of them in the 
course of foreign exchanges, had utterly destroyed the 
state bank currency for government uses, — it being 
illegal, as a matter of fact, for the government to re- 
ceive them. There was confusion in business ex- 
changes; war demands against the government were 
mounting up to more than $2,000,000 a day ; the treas- 
ury resources were exhausted; and the government in 
the midst of bankruptcy stood in immediate need of im- 
mense sums of money. Claims were instantly pressing, 
and if they could not be met the firms that had fur- 
nished supplies could furnish no more, while the sol- 
diers and sailors in the service had gone unpaid until 
their forbearance could no longer be expected. The 
country was facing a condition of affairs of which it 
may reasonably be said that none more perilous ever 
confronted a nation. 

In this period of great financial need it may be 
fairly said of the public men of the time, as Fessenden 
said in the Senate, that " nobody knew much about the 
question of finance." ' 

1 Francis Fessenden, Life of William Pitt Fessenden, Vol. 
I, p. 195. Fessenden said in the Senate: "I declare here to- 
day, that in the whole number of learned financial men that I 
have consulted, I never have found any two of them who agree ; 
and therefore it is hardly worth while for us to plead any very 
remarkable degree of ignorance when nobody is competent to 
instruct us; and yet such is the fact. I can state to you, Mr. 



.WAYS AND MEANS IN THE WAR 249 

It is not strange that in such a time leadership fell 
into the hands of men, who, if less discreet and less 
trained in finance than the times called for, were at 
any rate bold, patriotic, honest, straightforward, and 
aggressive in action. 

Stevens and his committee, with the Finance Com- 
mittee of the Senate headed by Fessenden, now took 
the lead in directing the financial policy of the country. 
Stevens recognized, as he said in the debates that fol- 
lowed, that he was " but poorly qualified for anything 
of the kind." He and his colleagues came nowhere 
near infallibility. But they gave anxious and patriotic 
consideration to the situation, and taking counsel from 
those whom they believed best qualified to advise, they 
acted up to the best light they had. Facing a neces- 
sitous situation that would not permit of delay, they 
resolved upon a policy that marks a turning point and 
has become the most notable landmark in American 
financial history. This policy resulted not in what 
Stevens wanted and sought strenuously to obtain, but 
in a complex result that was a composite, or compro- 
mise, between conflicting interests and forces. This 
compromise outcome was the famous Legal Tender 

President, that on one day I was advised very strongly by a 
leading financial man at all events to oppose this legal tender 
clause; he exclaimed against it with all the bitterness in the 
world. On the very same day I received a note from a friend 
of his telling me that we could not get along without it. I 
showed it to him and he expressed his utter surprise. He went 
home and next day telegraphed to me that he had changed his 
mind, and now thought it was absolutely necessary ; and his 
friend who wrote to me wrote again that he had changed his 
[laughter], and they were two of the most eminent financial 
men in the country." Globe, Feb. 12, 1862, p. 766. Such were 
the opinions of the " financial experts " by whom Stevens and 
his committee were expected to be directed. 



250 THE LIFE OF THADDEUS STEVENS 

Act of February 25, 1862, authorizing a loan of $500,- 
000,000 of 6 per cent, twenty-year bonds known as 
the " Five Twenties," due in twenty years and payable 
in five, and providing for the issue of $150,000,000 
of treasury notes commonly called " greenbacks," the 
notes to be exchangeable for the bonds and made a 
legal tender for all debts public and private, except 
customs dues and interest on the public debt. 

No piece of legislation in American history has ever 
aroused more enduring controversy, and after the lapse 
of more than a generation, honest and intelligent men 
are still in conflict of opinion as to its merits. 

The facts in the origin of this important measure 
may be summarized briefly. 

Mr. Chase in his December report, with the idea of 
making it easier to borrow, suggested a national bank- 
ing system requiring all banks to purchase United 
States stocks to hold as security for their circulating 
notes. 1 Out of this proposal came our national bank- 
ing system two years later. Such heavy labors were 
coming upon the Ways and Means Committee in 
charge of this report, that a division of labor was re- 
sorted to. Mr. Stevens, the chairman of the com- 
mittee, gave his chief attention to the preparation and 
pushing of the great and numerous appropriation bills 
which required a great expenditure of time and energy; 
Justin S. Morrill, of Vermont, father of the war tariff, 

1 This plan was probably inspired by Eleazar Lord's letter to 
Secretary Chase in November, 1861, though the essential virtue 
of Lord's plan for a national currency was eliminated, — namely, 
that the notes to be issued by the banks should be full legal 
tender for all debts, public and private, and that the so-called 
specie basis should be abandoned. The notes were to be exclu- 
sive and inconvertible. 



WAYS AND MEANS IN THE WAR 251 

became chairman of a subcommittee, whose duty it 
was to frame war taxation; while Elbridge G. Spaul- 
ding, of New York, was chairman of a subcommittee 
assigned to consider matters of currency and loans. 
To the latter subcommittee Secretary Chase's currency 
scheme was submitted. Samuel Hooper, a retired and 
wealthy merchant of Boston, and Erastus Corning, a 
New York millionaire Democratic opponent of the 
war administration, were Spaulding's coworkers on 
this committee. These three men took up the Secre- 
tary's plan and began to draft a bill for a national 
currency to be secured by government bonds. 

When, on December 28, 1861, the New York banks 
suspended specie payments, gold was withdrawn from 
circulation and the country, as we have noticed, was 
left with no other currency than the notes of suspended 
banks, — notes issued by sixteen hundred different in- 
stitutions and varying widely in value. Was it possi- 
ble for the government to rely on such a currency as 
that, or to authorize its use by the people ? Under the 
subtreasury law, as has been indicated, these notes could 
not be legally accepted and paid out by the federal 
treasury. It was known that the new national banking 
system would meet with stout opposition from friends 
of the state banks, and, at best, it would not be matured 
and put into operation for months and perhaps for 
more than a year to come. Adequate tax bills could 
not be passed and begin to produce revenues for an 
equal length of time, and internal taxes could not be 
collected at all until the government furnished an 
adequate legal currency in which they could be paid. 

To Stevens and his committee the issue seemed 



252 THE LIFE OF THADDEUS STEVENS 

clear: Shall the government break and the war stop, 
or shall the nation declare its independence of specie, 
rely upon its credit and its own resources, and issue 
its notes to be used as currency ? "A delay," says 
Mr. Spaulding, " would have been fatal to the Union 
cause," and accordingly he changed the legal tender 
section, intended originally to accompany the bank 
bill, into a separate bill, and on his own motion he 
introduced it into the House, December 30, 1861. 

The bill was referred to the full committee, whose 
members were about equally divided in opinion upon 
its merits. Spaulding and Hooper favored the bill. 
Morrill, of Vermont, Horton, Democrat, of Ohio, and 
Corning, of New York, were decided in their oppo- 
sition. Stevens at first doubted the constitutionality 
of the legal tender clause, — a strange doubt for a 
man of his habits and temper. But he soon overcame 
his scruples and decided to support the bill. The 
bill had a narrow escape from defeat in the committee, 
but a wavering member came to its support and con- 
sented to allow the bill to come before the House for 
consideration, January 7, 1862. 

The measure was regarded, according to its advo- 
cates, as a matter of necessity, not of choice. It 
was expected that the government would be out of 
means to pay its daily expenses in thirty days. A 
hundred million dollars were necessary within the next 
three months or the government must stop payment, 
and the committee saw no way to get along till the tax 
bills could be got ready except by a temporary issue 
of these treasury notes. 1 

1 Spaulding, History of the Legal Tender Paper Money, pp. 
17, 18. Mitchell, W. C, History of the Greenbacks, p. 47. 



WAYS AND MEANS IN THE WAR 253 

It was clear to all that government notes of some 
kind had to be issued, and the question arose as to 
whether they should be short time interest-bearing 
notes offered for investments, or non-interest-bearing 
notes that could be used by the government and the 
people for all the purposes of money. The latter 
policy was decided upon by Stevens and his com- 
mittee. 

This policy was in harmony with the recommenda- 
tions of the Secretary of the Treasury, who was now 
urging haste in its adoption. Mr. Chase was most 
reluctant to accept the provision making United States 
notes a legal tender, and he anxiously wished to avoid 
the necessity for such legislation. He, however, re- 
garded, it as " impossible in consequence of the large 
expenditures entailed by the war and the suspension 
of the banks, to procure sufficient coin for disburse- 
ments " ; and he gave it as his opinion that it had 
" become indispensably necessary that we should re- 
sort to the issue of United States notes." Chase 
urged that all discrimination should be prevented in 
the legal tender provision and that " all citizens in 
this respect should be put upon the same level, both 
of rights and duties." 1 

Though Chase came with reluctance to this con- 
clusion, he came to it with decision, and he gave the 
great weight of his influence to the support of the 
Legal Tender Bill. Whatever his scruples were as to 
the constitutionality of the measure, he yielded these 
to what he considered the pressure of the necessities 

1 Chase, Letter to Ways and Means Committee, cited in Sher- 
man's Recollections, p. 220. 



254 THE LIFE OF THADDEUS STEVENS 

of the treasury, and he expressed no dissent on that 
point until as Chief Justice he gave a decision adverse 
to the greenback legislation. 1 

In the conflict of proposals and opinions produced 
by the money crisis of 1862, it appears that there were 
substantially two alternatives open to the govern- 
ment. 

It could issue interest-bearing bonds and notes, go 
into the market with these securities and sell them 
for what they would bring in gold; and thus, in the 
way that was usual for governments, borrow money 
and pay the nation's obligations. This should be ac- 
companied with adequate taxation which would give 
the assurance that the treasury would have ample rev- 
enue to meet accruing interest upon its loans, and, in 
consequence, lead to the sale of the government secu- 
rities on better terms. It was contended then, as it 
has been ever since, that this would be the safe, honest, 
businesslike way, and in the end the most economical. 
In the opinion of the advocates of this plan it was the 
only honest way, the way that all tradition pointed 
out. At any rate, it was the way in which money 
lenders and bankers were accustomed to have gov- 
ernments proceed. It was in harmony with the stand- 
ard maxim of the so-called classical writers on public 
finance, who assert that only coin can be real money 
and that there are but two ways for governments to 
obtain it, — one is to take by taxation, and the other 
to borrow upon its notes and bonds. 

This plan involved the conduct of the war and all 
the business of the country upon a specie basis. No 

1 In Hepburn vs. Griswold. 



WAYS AND MEANS IN THE WAR 255 

matter at what a ruinous price the government was 
compelled to sell its bonds, it was contended that the 
gold could be obtained, if not in Wall Street and 
through the associated banks in America, then on 
Lombard Street or through the gold dealers in Europe. 
The national honor and good faith, it was contended, 
required this policy. To resort to paper money would 
be to violate the obligation of all contracts, cheat 
creditors, increase prices, disarrange all business and 
multiply the cost of the war. 

Those who proposed and defended this plan were 
not at all able to show that a sufficient quantity of 
gold would have been forthcoming. It was held that 
if the treasury should demand the gold and offer its 
bonds on sufficient terms, the demand would beget the 
supply. If this did not come immediately, then the 
consequences must follow: government must make a 
higher bid — offer its bonds at a lower rate — and 
wait till the supply came. Whether it would finally 
come no one knew. At this time of dire emergency, 
when the life of the nation was assailed, if the govern- 
ment needed $2,000,000,000, let it offer its bonds 
for what they would bring and trust that a sufficient 
supply of gold would flow into the treasury. No 
device, expedient, or legislation of the government 
should attempt to interfere with the " laws of trade " ; 
that is, with the " natural operation of the specie 
standard." 1 

Whether this would have been possible in the face 

1 1 am indebted in this discussion to a pamphlet on " A 
National Currency," by Eleazar Lord, published by A. D. F. 
Randolph, New York, 1863. 



256 THE LIFE OF THADDEUS STEVENS 

of mounting debts and expenses of the war is, at best, 
only a matter of speculation. Upon that financial au- 
thorities are by no means agreed. The burden of 
argument in that day, and of expert financial opinion 
since, appears to favor the view that it would have 
been impossible; that an increase of the currency by 
some means was an absolute necessity. Gold writers 
have never successfully dealt with the stubborn fact 
that the quantity of coin was wholly inadequate to 
the purposes of war; there was not enough in all 
the banks to furnish the government with a month's 
supply. " On January I, 1862," says Professor 
Dewey, " the banks had but $87,000,000 to meet $459,- 
000,000 of indebtedness. It would have been impos- 
sible to go through a war on the basis of a currency 
so inadequate." * A month later the situation was 
worse and it was growing worse week by week. ■ It 
is clear that the idea of attempting to retain, or rather 
to restore, specie payments on so vast a scale of ex- 
penditure should have been abandoned without delay 
and instead of trusting to the suspended state banks 
and the dealers in gold to furnish a currency — the 
life-blood of the imperiled nation — the nation should 
have trusted itself and relied upon its own resources. 

This was the alternative policy. It was bolder, 
more original, quite unusual, not to say revolutionary. 
Its design was to make the treasury of the nation in- 
dependent of the holders of gold; to prevent "shin- 
ning " in the marts of the money dealers, and the con- 
sequent sale of government bonds at discreditable 
prices ; to avoid affording these gold dealers a " corner " 

1 Financial History of the United States, p. 283. 



WAYS AND MEANS IN THE WAR 257 

in their commodity, giving them the whip-hand in de- 
termining at what cost the government might obtain 
money to conduct the struggle for its life. The plan 
was to be independent of gold, to let its holders keep 
their gold, or sell it where they would; to abandon 
specie as money; to use the sovereign power of the 
nation to create a currency of its own, based on the re- 
sources and property of the nation, the faith of the 
people, and the power of taxation, — a currency which 
the government would accept for taxes and take in 
exchange for its bonds, and use in its payments, and 
which all classes of people without discrimination, 
could use as current money of the realm and as a legal 
tender for all their exchanges, debts, and taxes. In 
the absence of gold and silver, which had now sought 
their hiding-places and were failing to do the money 
work of the country, this plan would furnish the 
people with a uniform national currency, enable the 
government to meet its obligations, and save the busi- 
ness of the country from paralysis. This alternative, 
regarded as a temporary expedient, was deemed to be 
rendered imperative by the necessities of the hour. 

Stevens favored the latter alternative, — the aban- 
donment of gold, and the abandonment of a paper 
currency issued by banks that had already shown their 
inability to redeem their paper promises at their face 
value in gold. He stood for the establishment of a 
uniform nation-wide paper currency for all, a cur- 
rency issued directly by the United States government 
without the mediation of banks. This currency would 
do the work of money for the people. It would not 
be a commodity of foreign commerce nor an article 



258 THE LIFE OF THADDEUS STEVENS 

of export. It was to be interchangeable with six per 
cent. United States bonds, based upon the good faith 
and property of the whole people. If the bonds were 
safe the notes would be safe. He believed that this 
would give the country a safe, ample, uniform national 
currency for all the trade and business of the country 
and prove an effective means in promoting the sale 
of government bonds. And thus " every note-holder 
and every bondholder, as creditors of the government, 
would be directly interested in maintaining the na- 
tional unity, prosperity, honor, and good faith, while 
the interests of the people would prove a guarantee 
against excessive and dangerous issues of currency." * 
It is pertinent to observe that those who were con- 
stantly crying out from fear of an over-issue of such 
notes never seemed to have any fear of an over-issue 
of interest-bearing bonds. 2 

This scheme, as we shall see, was so modified and 
mutilated by its opponents that Stevens subsequently 
refused to recognize it as his own. Those interested in 
the gold policy, while they could not accomplish out- 
right the defeat of the Legal Tender Act, accomplished 
their purpose by another process, the purpose of com- 
pelling the government to sell its bonds for what they 

1 Eleazar Lord, National Currency. 

2 If Stevens' idea of a single uniform national currency had 
been carried to its completion it would have involved, of course, 
the prohibition of the notes of the state banks, and this source 
of the paper inflation that subsequently followed would have 
been prevented. If the United States Treasury notes were to 
be made the basis of state bank issues at the ratio of two or 
three to one, the whole currency would become redundant and 
depreciated. The bullionist proposed the wrong remedy for pre- 
venting inflation. He would have allowed the note-issuing 
function to the state banks, while denying it to the national 
government. 






'\i 



WAYS AND MEANS IN THE WAR 259 

would command in the open market, at a ruinous dis- 
count in gold. This was not a failure, as Stevens 
always believed, of the greenback legislation, but a & 
design of a creditor and money-lending class who had 
gold to offer in considerable quantities. 

Very few men of the time dared to think for them- 
selves upon the subject of the currency. Among the 
men then in public life Stevens was one of the very 
few bold minds that ventured to accept suggestions 
calculated to lead the people away from the beaten 
paths of habit and tradition; and even Stevens, with 
all his boldness of thought and leadership, still clung 
to the idea that gold and silver were to be looked to 
as a basis for future money. Resuming specie pay- 
ments was still in his mind. Stevens may have been 
partly influenced by Eleazer Lord, a financial pam- 
phleteer of the time, who was making repeated public 
pleas for a credit currency wholly disconnected from 
the precious metals and based upon the bonded pledge 
of the nation. " The existing theory on the subject," 
said Lord, " is too firmly fixed by education, pre- 
scription, prejudice, and interest, to be overthrown by 
common sense, by reasoning, or by anything but irre- 
sistible necessity. Such words as safe, secured, na- 
tional, uniform (sound), when predicated of anything 
but gold as currency, are to the specie-paying theorist 
mere sounds devoid of significance. He even thinks 
it a virtue to suffer and die a martyr to his idea of 
gold rather than yield it and cast loose on the sea of 
credit bereft of this ideal anchor. When that pure 
extract and quintessence of wealth, the solvent of all 
earthly wants, the object of life's weary toil, is with- 



260 THE LIFE OF THADDEUS STEVENS 

drawn from sight by export to other climes, his love 
of it, his sense of bereavement, desolation, and peril 
without it, his desire to see its yellow face once more, 
are intensified to an agonizing extreme." 

Lord was looking to the triumph of credit. He saw 
that specie payments could not on any system be uni- 
formally maintained ; " that crises, panics, emergen- 
cies, would arise when banks ought not to be required 
to pay specie, when desolation and ruin must follow 
any attempt to pay specie." Very recent experience 
had shown this. The banker, like the rest of the 
community, had recognized that the obligation to pay 
specie was suspended, and this was but an admission 
that " to regard specie as the basis of the currency 
and as the element and ground of its safety and 
soundness was but a delusion and a humbug." * 

1 " The idea of specie payments, even in ordinary times of 
peace, blindly assumes what in reality and practise never was 
and never could possibly be true, namely, the possession in the 
country and within the control of the banks of coin sufficient to 
redeem the notes issued by them and necessary to the business 
and convenience of the people. The proportion of coin held by 
the banks is rarely ten per cent, of the amount of notes issued 
by them; it is greatly less than the amount held subject to 
deposit. 

" This so-called specie basis, whenever there is a foreign de- 
mand for coin, proves to be a mere fiction, a practical humbug ; 
and whenever, by an excess of imports, this pretended basis is 
exported to pay foreign debts, the bank-notes are withdrawn or 
become worthless, the currency for the time is annihilated, prices 
fall, business is suspended, debts remain unpaid, panic and dis- 
tress ensue, men in active business fail, bankruptcy, ruin, and 
disgrace reign. When thousands of the most industrious and 
useful men have been sacrificed, their families reduced to pov- 
erty, their credit and character ruined and their energies para- 
lyzed, — then a new set of merchants, manufacturers, etc., come 
forward to go through the same experience. The demoralizing 
effects of this course of operations on the whole population of 
the country and in every department of social, industrial and 
political affairs are beyond description. They can be compared 
only to the effects on the health of a community of a constant 



WAYS AND MEANS IN THE WAR 261 

The conflicts of opinion and interests were waged 
primarily between these two alternatives, and the mixed 
result was satisfactory to neither party, though the 
brunt of blame for all the evils, or supposed evils, of 
the greenback legislation has been assiduously, not to 
say insidiously, imputed to its original proposers. 

When the plan of the committee to issue legal tender 
notes was made known to the country, bankers who 
were opposed to the measure came to Washington and 
endeavored to persuade the Secretary and committee 
that there was a better remedy for the situation of the 
treasury than the issue of government paper money. 
They proposed through their spokesman, Mr. James 
Gallatin, President of the Gallatin Bank of New York, 
essentially the alternative plan that I have described, — 
the sale of long time bonds at the market price " ac- 
companied with heavy taxation." Gallatin's plan also 
involved the retirement of the demand notes, the issue 
of $100,000,000 of interest-bearing treasury notes, and 

and incurable epidemic, an intensified fever and ague, a perma- 
nent tantalism. 

" When specie is not wanted by the people, and there is no 
foreign or unusual demand for it, and the banks, though promis- 
ing to pay it on demand for all their circulating notes and de- 
posits, study only to keep as little of it as possible on hand ; their 
notes freely circulate on the credit of the promise which they 
bear, and things go on till the delusion becomes manifest. The 
moment the note-holders want the pretended basis, they dis- 
cover that it exists only in theory and imagination, that they 
have been deluded by corporate promises which can not be, and 
which were never expected to be fulfilled. What then?_ Why, 
the promises ought to be suspended until a state of things _ is 
brought about when there is no longer any demand for specie ; 
and then, forsooth, the bankers may safely resume specie pay- 
ments and receive credit for renewing the issue of their paper 
promises. In fine, they should be required to pay_ specie when 
nobody wants it; but to require them to pay specie when it is 
wanted and they have not got it, and can not possibly get_ it, 
would be absurd and fruitful only of desolation and ruin." 
(Eleazar Lord, National Currency, 1863.) 



262 THE LIFE OF THADDEUS STEVENS 

the suspension of the subtreasury act so as to permit 
the banks to become the depositories of the government 
funds. It was to let the government take care of 
the banks ; the banks could take care of the currency 
and the money of the people. The government should 
then go into the " market " and borrow this money 
as best it could, through the banks. 

There are those who call this a patriotic effort of 
the masters of finance to aid the government in its 
emergency, but there are others so obtuse as still to 
believe that the bankers' plan was primarily in their 
own interests. By this plan the state banks were to 
be made the sole agents of the government throughout 
the crisis; their irredeemable notes, even after their 
suspension of specie payments, were to be received by 
the government for loans, — notes whose gold basis 
had just been proved but a fiction, or a figment of the 
imagination; these local banks, more than fifteen hun- 
dren in number, were to continue to usurp the impor- 
tant franchise of supplying the circulating medium of 
the country, — a medium to be used as the money of 
commerce without any guarantee whatever of its uni- 
formity or stability ! The essential national power of 
controlling the currency was to be left to these state 
agencies. To the national government, not to the 
banks nor to the states, had been given the power to 
coin money and to regulate its value. That was an 
exclusive national power. The state was not to issue 
money nor to authorize its issue. 1 Yet Stevens was 

1 See " Review of Our Finances," by R. J. Walker, December 
19, 1862, in Continental Monthly, an argument for an exclusive 
National currency. Walker, however, was arguing for a bank 
currency. 



WAYS AND MEANS IN THE WAR 263 

roundly denounced as stupid and ignorant because he 
would not advise his committee and the House blindly 
to accept this plan of the associated banks. 

The Secretary of the Treasury and the committee 
rejected this alternative proposed by the bankers, and 
under the advice of Chase there was added to the bill 
the provision permitting the exchange of the legal ten- 
der notes for 6 per cent., twenty year bonds, and au- 
thorizing the treasury to issue $500,000,000 of these 
bonds. 

It was on the Legal Tender Act, with this bond pro- 
posal, that the House went into debate, January 28, 
1862. After four weeks of earnest discussion the bill 
became a law on February 25th, but not until the Sen- 
ate had succeeded in attaching such amendments to the 
measure as led its authors to disclaim responsibility 
for its results. 

Nothing can be attempted here toward a study of 
these debates beyond presenting the attitude of Ste- 
vens on the merits of the various arguments and issues 
involved. In his principal speech on the subject on 
February 6, 1862, Stevens admitted that it was not 
desirable to depart from the circulating medium 
" which by the common consent of civilized nations 
had formed the standard of value." It was a matter 
of necessity not of choice, and of that necessity Con- 
gress alone should be the judge. He anticipated a 
treasury need to the end of the fiscal year 1863 of 
$1,000,000,000 with a corresponding enlargement of 
the public debt. Where were these vast sums to be 
obtained? The Secretary had not been able to nego- 
tiate the loans already authorized. If $700,000,000 



264 THE LIFE OF. THADDEUS STEVENS 

were offered in bonds, he had no doubt they would 
sell as low as 60 per cent, and even then it would be 
found to be impossible to find payment in coin. Pay- 
ment would have to be accepted in the depreciated 
notes of non-specie-paying banks, for he supposed no 
one expected the resumption of specie payments till 
the war was over. The least discount on the bonds 
that any reasonable man had a right to expect was 
25 per cent, and at that rate it would require at least 
$1,500,000,000 in bonds to produce the required cur- 
rency of $1,100,000,000 needed to the end of the next 
fiscal year. It was a sum too frightful to be tolerated. 
He held out stoutly for the legal tender clause and he 
preferred the greenbacks to the bank-notes under the 
Secretary's bank currency plan. The security of the 
government was as good as that of the banks and 
would give as much currency. The whole benefit of 
the bank currency plan would accrue to the banks, as 
they would receive the circulation without interest and 
at the same time draw interest on the government 
bonds, while it was plain to be seen that if the United 
States issued these notes the benefit of the whole cir- 
culation would accrue to the people, — an argument 
for greenbacks over bank-notes that has ever since 
been effectively used, and which has hardly been suc- 
cessfully refuted. The government issue would be 
equal to a loan without interest to the full amount of 
the circulation. The proposed new banking system 
could, at best, afford no immediate relief. 

Having shown, as he thought, that there was no 
other possible mode for the relief of the treasury in 
the emergency, Stevens proceeded to examine the ob- 



WAYS AND MEANS IN THE WAR 265 

jections that had been raised to the legal tender plan 
proposed by his committee. 

He quickly disposed of the constitutional argument 
that the power to issue legal tender notes was nowhere 
expressly granted to Congress. " But few acts which 
government can perform are specified in that instru- 
ment. It would require a volume larger than the 
Pandects of Justinian or the Code Napoleon to make 
such enumeration. Everything necessary to carry 
out the granted powers is clearly implied. If nothing- 
could be done by Congress except what is enumerated 
the government could not live a week." He thought 
little of the argument based on the intention of the 
Convention of 1787. " The right to emit bills of 
credit which the convention expressly refused to grant, 
has for fifty years, by the common consent of the 
nation, been practised and is now conceded by every 
opponent of this bill. With what grace can the con- 
comitant power to make them a legal tender be ob- 
jected to? The Supreme Court has settled the prin- 
ciple upon which this bill is based, that when anything 
is necessary to carry into effect the granted power, it 
is constitutional." 

Stevens here stood upon the constitutional ground 
occupied by Hamilton in the infancy of the Union in 
his fundamental doctrine of implied powers, by which 
Hamilton laid the cornerstone for the powers of the 
federal government. In his famous opinion fur- 
nished to Washington in advocating the validity of 
the First United States Bank, Hamilton laid down 
the principle that was afterward affirmed by Chief 
Justice Marshall in the famous case of McCulloch vs. 



266 THE LIFE OF THADDEUS STEVENS 

Maryland. This principle was now drawn into use 
by Stevens. He stood upon the impregnable ground 
that if any law is necessary and proper to carry into 
execution any delegated power, such law is valid. 
The test of constitutionality was in the end sought; 
the discretion of Congress was absolute and sovereign 
as to the means to be employed. Stevens held, as 
Hamilton did, that the necessity need not be absolute, 
inevitable, and overwhelming; "if it be useful, expe- 
dient, profitable, the necessity is within the consti- 
tutional meaning, and whether such necessity exists is 
solely for the decision of Congress. If Congress 
should decide this measure to be necessary to a granted 
power, no department of the government can rejudge 
it. The Supreme Court might think the judgment of 
Congress erroneous, but they could not review it." 
This view, which Stevens was then advocating and 
reasserting, has now passed into history with the 
sanction of the Supreme Court itself and with the gen- 
eral acceptance of the nation, and it will be the final 
judgment of history on the legal tender legislation of 
that day. 

Having established its constitutionality, Stevens pro- 
ceeded to defend the measure on the ground of expe- 
diency. He wished the notes to be made full legal 
tender money. All admitted the necessity of some 
issue, and he did not see how the notes would be 
made worse by being made legal tender. It would 
not impair the obligations of contracts — though Con- 
gress had power to do even that — as all contracts are 
made not only with a view to present laws but subject 
to the future legislation of the country. The value 



WAYS AND MEANS IN THE WAR 267 

of coin had been repeatedly changed by legislation, 
neither our gold nor silver coin being as valuable as 
it was fifty years before. In 1853 Congress debased 
the coin over 7 per cent., and made it a legal tender. 
The ex post facto laws prohibited by the Constitution 
refer only to crimes and misdemeanors, not to civil 
contracts. 

As to the inflation of the currency and the rise of 
prices, he did not see how the same amount of notes 
without the legal tender quality would be better. Ste- 
vens expected the notes to be issued only in limited 
quantities, and that limitation upon their issue he relied 
upon as the chief factor in keeping the notes at par 
with gold. He was not thinking of a currency entirely 
independent of specie. He believed that the value of 
these notes would depend entirely upon two factors : in 
the first place, that the notes should be made to perform 
all the functions of money — that all men without ex- 
ception might use them to pay their debts and their 
taxes, and that the government would do so, too; 
and, in the second place, upon the quantity issued as 
compared with the business of the country. That 
belief was founded upon the best economic authority 
of his day. No experience or new economic argument 
has since been brought forward to disprove it. These 
two factors : namely, reasonable limitation in quantity, 
and universal money use, will maintain the parity of 
government paper. Such was Stevens' opinion, and 
in that opinion who will say that he was not standing 
on sound economic ground ? 

It should be remembered that the notes that Stevens 
proposed were not the notes that were issued. The 



268 THE LIFE OF THADDEUS STEVENS 

notes that he favored were the notes of the Green- 
backer, — ■ full legal tender money, limited in amount, 
and convertible into interest-bearing bonds. The dif- 
ference between Stevens and the later Greenbacker 
was that he looked upon these notes, as all their pro- 
moters did at the time, as a temporary expedient, and 
he expected the bonds which they might be used to 
buy not to be continually exchangeable for greenbacks 
at the option of the holder, but to be paid in gold at 
the end of twenty years, if they had not been redeemed 
in lawful money before that time; that is, in the same 
notes the purchaser should use in buying the bonds. 
United States notes, lawful money for all alike, based 
on an ultimate gold security (since Stevens expected to 
return to specie payments), that he thought to be " nec- 
essary and proper," and the best that could be devised 
in the hour of uncertainty and distress. 1 

1 A government currency based on national bonds, to be 
issued as bank-notes through the then existing banks, a legal 
tender for all debts, public and private, with the understanding 
that the notes should never be redeemable in specie, — this 
alternative proposal was made at the time. This would have 
been essentially the same kind of currency that Stevens sought 
to obtain, except that it was more radical in that it was proposed 
as a permanent system and not as a temporary expedient prompted 
by necessity. Lord's banking experience, his altruistic principles 
and long study of the currency problem had brought him to his 
convictions as to what the nation should do for a currency in 
the crisis of the war. He would establish a national paper cur- 
rency independent of specie, that would answer for either war or 
peace. This was the scheme of Eleazar Lord. Lord, whose con- 
tributions to the literature of our financial controversies entitle 
him to recognition and to a worthy place in the financial his- 
tory of the country, was born in Connecticut in 17SS. He 
studied theology in Andover and Princeton, but the failure 
of his eyesight compelled him* to give up his profession of the 
ministry. In 1815 he settled in New York City and engaged 
in commercial pursuits and later in banking. He founded the 
Manhattan Insurance Company in 1821, and was for twelve 
years its President. He proposed the free banking system for 



.WAYS AND MEANS IN THE WAR 269 

Stevens was original and bold enough to venture 
•nly so far in that direction as he thought the neces- 
sities of the war compelled. He was less theoretical, 
more of an opportunist. He looked to the restoration 
of the old system in the resumption of specie payments 
after the war, not by the retirement and disuse of 
the greenbacks, but in their being brought to a parity 
with gold and silver. 

The national paper currency that Stevens proposed 
was not given a trial. Evidence that there could have 
been a better currency for the time has by no means 
been convincing, an opinion which a lay citizen may 
be so bold as to entertain in spite of the traditional 
and conventional arguments of gold standard writers 
from that day to this. 

To adopt these notes, it is true, was to cut loose from 
the gold standard as a basis for the conduct of the war, 
and, temporarily, as a measure of debts and a stand- 
ard of deferred payments. This was bound to happen 
to a greater degree than Stevens appreciated or un- 

New York which was adopted by that state in 1838. He was 
a successful, banker, the organizer of the National Institution 
for the Promotion of Industry, and by personal influence and 
argument helped to induce Henry Clay to declare himself in 
opposition to free trade. Lord became one of the founders of 
the University of New York City, and he was for many years 
one of its trustees. He was a philanthropist and, like Peter 
Cooper, he became the public spirited projector of many 
schemes for the public good. In 1861 he originated and drew in 
his own handwriting what he claimed as the draft of the first 
greenback that was ever issued in the United States. Thou- 
sands of Americans will rise up to bless or to blame him for 
that! Lord published, among other essays, an extensive work- 
on Credit, Currency and Banking (1828) ; A letter on the Na- 
tional Currency (1861) ; Six letters on the Necessity and Prac- 
ticability of a National Currency (1862). My information on 
the facts in Lord's life is derived from Appleton's Cyclopedia of 
American Biography. 



270 THE LIFE OF THADDEUS STEVENS 

derstood. But the gold standard for war payments 
and emergencies had already proved inadequate. No 
one claimed that the emergency could be met without 
a paper currency. The only question was whether 
there should be a government currency or a currency 
of a number of irresponsible state banks. 

The value of the proposed notes in terms of gold 
coin, gold bullion, or any other commodity, would 
chiefly, if not entirely, depend upon the factors that 
Stevens named, — the limited quantity, the growing 
demand, and the full money function. He thought 
that the limited amount proposed would float at par 
with gold, and when he was asked by Judge Thomas, 
of Massachusetts, whether he expected to limit the 
amount to the $150,000,000 proposed, Stevens an- 
swered emphatically that he did; he expected to call 
for no more. Four months later 1 when Stevens, as 
spokesman of his committee, was calling upon the 
House to vote another $150,000,000, Judge Thomas 
again inquired whether that would be the last $150,- 
000,000 they would be called upon to vote. Stevens 
replied : " I said before that $150,000,000 was all that 
I would ask and if they had passed the bill as I wanted 
it, it is all I would have asked; but they spoiled the 
bill and I don't know how long it will go on." 

He recognized in the first discussion the danger of 
over issue, but he expected the government paper to 
displace the bank circulation of $200,000,000, and that 
the increasing business of the country would bring 
coin into use; it would come out of hiding for invest- 
ment. He regarded the notes as inconvertible (into 

ijune 18, 1862. 



WAYS AND MEANS IN THE WAR 271 

coin), and he understood perfectly that the value of 
the paper would depend upon the quantity issued, and 
the demand placed upon it. He expected rapid circu- 
lation of the money, $100 in notes buying ten times its 
value in a year. The money would soon find lodgment 
in the banks, and these could not find a better invest- 
ment than a twenty-year bond that would ultimately be 
redeemed in gold. He had no doubt that the $500,- 
000,000 of bonds would be absorbed in less time than 
would be needed by the government; and " thus $150,- 
000,000 would do the work of $500,000,000 of bonds." 
He was not much in sympathy with " the unfortunate 
money lenders who were clamorous lest the debtor 
should the more easily pay his debt." He met with 
his usual sneer — he was rich in sneers — the counter- 
proposals before the House. Roscoe Conkling's pro- 
posal to issue 7 per cent, bonds payable in thirty-one 
years to be sold for the currency of the banks of 
Boston, New York, or Philadelphia, seemed to Ste- 
vens to lack every element of wise legislation. To 
receive " irredeemable currency and pay that in its 
depreciated condition to our contractors, soldiers, and 
creditors generally ! The banks would issue unlimited 
amounts of what would become trash and buy good 
hard money bonds of the nation. Was there ever such 
a temptation to swindle ? " 

He denounced the substitute of the minority of the 
committee as a curiosity. It proposed notes, not a 
legal tender, bearing 3.65 per cent., 1 not payable on de- 
mand but at the pleasure of the United States. Here 
was a kind of currency never before known, — a circu- 

x And fundable into 7.3 per cent, bonds. 



272 THE LIFE OF THADDEUS STEVENS 

lation bearing interest. " Suppose a tailor, shoemaker, 
or laborer were to take one of these bills, and in a 
week he should wish to use it in market, or store, or 
elsewhere, he must sit down and calculate the in- 
terest on the days he has had it to find its value. This 
would be rather inconvenient on a frosty day. This 
currency would make it necessary for every man to 
carry an arithmetic or interest table with which to 
gage the value of the circulating medium." 1 

In conclusion, Stevens expressed the earnest hope 
that the bill might pass, but not without the legal 
tender clause. If it did not pass, then he would that 
the members of the Committee on Ways and Means 
might have the power to resign their places to let 
the opponents of the bill mature some other plan. He 
would attempt no other. " The Committee on Ways 
and Means have labored in the preparation of this 
measure anxiously and to the best of their poor abili- 
ties. ... If this bill pass, I shall hail it as the most 
auspicious measure of this Congress; if it should fail, 
the result will be more deplorable than any disaster 
which could befall us." 2 

The bill passed the House as Stevens favored it, 
with no exception clause. The notes were to be a 
legal tender for all debts, public and private. The 
discriminating exceptions were imposed by the Sen- 
ate. When the bill came back to the House it con- 
tained, among other amendments, two provisions that 
were calculated to defeat the chief objects of the bill. 
These objects were to prevent all forcing of the gov- 

1 Globe, February 6, 1862, p. 688. 

2 Globe, February 6, 1862, p. 689. 



L WAYS AND MEANS IN THE WAR 2y$ 

crnmcnt to sell its bonds in the market to the highest 
bidder, and to induce bankers and capitalists to ex- 
change the legal tender notes for 6 per cent, bonds at 
par or lose their interest, thus furnishing a continually 
recurring currency by the sale of the bonds. " A 
dollar in a miser's safe unproductive is a sore dis- 
turbance," as Stevens had said. 

One of the objectionable amendments provided that 
the greenbacks might be deposited at the subtreasury 
for treasury notes bearing 7.3 per cent, and payable in 
two years. This " vicious deposit system upon inter- 
est," as Stevens called it, would prevent the legal ten- 
ders from being converted into bonds, and as there 
could be no reasonable expectation that the government 
would be able to pay its interest-bearing notes in two 
years, the treasury would be at the mercy of its 
creditors, and would be compelled to submit to any 
hard bargain they chose to drive unless the govern- 
ment should consent to become dishonored by refusal 
to redeem its notes. 

The other Senate provision was still more objec- 
tionable : namely, that the interest on the bonds should 
be paid in coin, and that in order to secure the coin 
the Secretary of the Treasury should go into the 
market and sell his bonds for what they would bring. 
The bill was thus weighted down with a proposed 
absurdity of two inconsistent and conflicting cur- 
rencies, — one money for ordinary commercial trans- 
actions among the people, with " the preposterous 
provision that the government dues to a particular class 
should be paid in another and wholly different legal 
tender." This was gold, the want of which had made 



274 THE LIFE OE THADDEUS STEVENS 

the treasury notes necessary and which must yet be 
purchased at any sacrifice. So, after all, the treasury 
was not to escape from its shackles, but must be forced 
to hawk its bonds to the gold brokers in Wall Street 
for gold ; and the plan for a new national currency was 
to be brought to naught. 

Within a few months the " financiers " who were 
responsible for these Senate amendments began to 
complain of the evils arising from the disparity be- 
tween specie and greenback notes, and with an assump- 
tion of superior virtue and wisdom, they attributed all 
these evils to the legal tender legislation. On the 
other hand, the Greenbackers attributed those evils to 
the legislation promoted by the advocates of specie that 
made one currency for the government and another 
for the people, — the amendment that bound the gov- 
ernment to pay its bond interest in gold. The gov- 
ernment thus came forth and proclaimed itself a 
constant and permanent customer for gold at what- 
ever price, as an exportable article of commercial 
traffic, in competition with its foreign rivals and with 
the whole money power of the world. That gold 
would rise was certain and was as clearly foreseen by 
others, if not by the "financiers," as the law of 
gravitation. Yet the Senate had hastily allowed this 
" expert opinion " to dictate an " invidious and un- 
heard of preference among creditors of the govern- 
ment." 1 

It was exactly this that Stevens and his coadjutors 
sought to avoid. They wanted no partial half-way 
measure, no exceptions, no evasions, no equivocations, 

1 Eleazar Lord, Letters on a National Currency, p. 41. 



WAYS AND MEANS IN THE WAR 275 

no class legislation. If these notes were to be made 
money, they should be money for all classes and con- 
ditions of men. There should be one currency for 
all sections and classes alike, and not one kind of 
money for the poor and another for the rich, or one 
kind for the debtor and another for the creditor. If 
a forced loan were to be laid on the business of the 
country, it should be laid upon all businesses alike, the 
money-lending business as well as upon every other. 
If these notes were a means of making the people pay 
for the support of the war, all should be made to pay ; 
and Stevens saw no reason why the government should 
make an exception and provide special legislation to 
safeguard the interests of a class of men represent- 
ing accumulated wealth. If by long continuance of 
the war the public debt should reach $2,000,000,000, 

— and Stevens' vision upon that score was not be- 
clouded as was that of so many public men of the time 

— it would require $120,000,000 of gold annually to 
meet the interest, requiring a semi-annual payment of 
more gold than the combined banks of the country 
contained. 1 This would enhance the price of gold, 
and bankers and brokers would horde it for sale to 
the government at ruinous prices; gold and treasury 
notes would part company and speculations in gold 
would follow. This hazardous outcome Stevens saw 
clearly from the beginning and he sought to do his 
best to prevent it. 

Consequently, when the bill came back from the 
Senate with these obstructing and discriminating 

1 In fact the jmnual interest payment became much larger 
than this. 



276 THE LIFE OF THADDEUS STEVENS 

clauses, Stevens was ready to abandon the whole legal 
tender feature of the bill rather than accept the 
" pernicious amendments." He denounced the 
amended measure as " an incongruous monster," as 
a bill with " many uncouth features," and " no won- 
der, for it had a vast number of progenitors and must 
partake of the lineaments of all." As a means of 
breaking down the amendments he contended with 
reference to the exception that it was proposed to make 
to the legal tender provision of the bill, either that 
the whole legal tender provision should be abandoned 
or the exception should be extended. He, therefore, 
in order to make the exception odious and defeat it, 
moved to extend it, so that if the treasury notes were 
not to be legal tender for dues to the bondholder, 
neither should they be in payments due to soldiers, 
sailors, contractors, farmers, and producers. These, 
too, were creditors of the government. Many of 
them were risking their lives in defense of their coun- 
try, and they were certainly as deserving of the con- 
sideration of the government as were those who 
staked only their money upon the issue, — and that, 
too, only on special security. This, says Mr. White, 
" put the House to the severest possible test." 1 It 
did, indeed, test the spirit and motive of some of the 
members of Congress. It appears that Stevens was 
putting it up to the House to decide whether it would 
stand for privilege or equality, whether it would or- 
dain and establish " one currency for the bondholder, 
another for the plow-holder " ; a dear money to re- 
pay those who had quantities of capital to lend to the 
1 Horace White, Money and Banking, p. 155. 



WAYS AND MEANS IN THE WAR 2J7 

government, but a cheap money to pay the producers 
who were furnishing supplies for the armies in the 
field and the men in the trenches who were shoulder- 
ing their muskets for the sake of the Union. 

This has been denounced as the scheme of the dem- 
agogue. It was not. It was rather the plea of a 
great commoner whose sympathies were with the com- 
mon people who were bearing the nation's burdens, and 
of an honest public servant who had sufficient nerve 
and insight to withstand the demands of interested 
and powerful moneyed classes. It was, also, the plea 
of an astute political manager who sought to compass 
the rejection of amendments that he honestly thought 
would be injurious to the interests of his country- 
men. Stevens said, as he approached this second dis- 
cussion of the legal tender bill, that he did so with 
more depression of spirit than he had ever approached 
a public question, having as he said, " a melancholy 
foreboding that we are about to consummate a cun- 
ningly devised scheme which will carry great injury 
and great loss to all classes of the people throughout 
the Union, except one." * 

The original bill had been hailed with delight 
throughout the country. Congratulations had come 

1 Peter Cooper, in accepting the nomination of the Greenback 
party for the presidency in 1876 (Indianapolis, May 17), said: 
" The introduction of that little word except into the original 
law drew tears from the eyes of Thaddeus Stevens when he 
looked down the current of events and saw our bonds in the 
hands of foreigners who would be receiving a gold interest on 
every hundred dollars of bonds that cost them but fifty or sixty 
dollars in gold. 

" But for the introduction of that word except into that 
original law our bonds would have been taken at par by our 
own people, and the interest would have been paid at home in 
currency instead of being paid to foreigners in gold." 



' 



278 THE LIFE OF THADDEUS STEVENS 

in from all classes of people, — merchants, traders, 
manufacturers, mechanics, laborers, and from the 
Boards of Trade of the principal cities. 1 

" It is true," said Stevens, " a doleful sound came 
up from the caverns of bullion brokers, and from the 
saloons of the associated banks. Their cashiers and 
agents were soon on the ground, and persuaded the 
Senate with but little deliberation, to mangle and 
destroy what it had cost the House months to digest, 
consider, and pass. They fell upon the bill in hot 
haste and so disfigured and deformed it that its very 
father would not know it. Instead of being a benef- 
icent and invigorating measure, it is now positively 
mischievous. It has all the bad qualities that its ene- 
mies charged on the original bill and none of its bene- 
fits. It now creates money, and by its very terms de- 
clares it a depreciated currency. It makes two classes 
of money — one for the banks and brokers, and an- 
other for the people. It discriminates between the 
rights of different classes of creditors, allowing the rich 
capitalist to demand gold, and compelling the ordinary 
lender of money to receive notes which the govern- 
ment had purposely discredited." 2 

Other minor amendments were also objectionable as 
tending toward favoritism and class legislation. Stev- 

1 Senator Henry Wilson, of Massachusetts, said in the Senate 
that not a thousand people in his state opposed the legal tender 
clause, that ninety-nine in a hundred of the loyal people favored 
it, that the sentiment of the nation " approaches unanimity in 
its favor." He had letters from several large commercial houses 
representing millions of capital, and " they say that they do not 
know a merchant in the city of Boston engaged in active busi- 
ness who is not for this legal tender." Globe, 2d Session, Thirty- 
seventh Congress, Vol. 59, pp. 788-789, February 13, 1862. 

2 Globe, Feb. 20, 1862, p. 900. 



WAYS AND MEANS IN THE WAR 279 

ens pleaded for equity and fair play to all classes 
alike and in his conclusion he earnestly urged his 
amendment enlarging the exceptions in order, as he 
said, that " if this pernicious system is to be adopted, 
if the beauty of the original bill is to be impaired en- 
tirely, those who are righting our battles and the 
widows and orphans of those who are lying in their 
graves in every part of the country, killed in defense 
of the government, may not be placed upon a worse 
footing than those who hold the bonds of the gov- 
ernment and the coin of the country." * He dis- 
claimed responsibility for the result of the bill, and 
he looked upon its passage in its amended form as 
deplorable and permanently injurious to all classes of 
the community except the class that he had excepted, 
— bankers, bond buyers, and bullionists. 

The House agreed to the Senate amendment pro- 
viding for the payment of bond interest in coin, but 
it disagreed to some other amendments. The result 
was a conference committee between the two houses. 
Messrs. Fessenden, Sherman and Carlisle represented 
the Senate and Messrs. Stevens, Sedgwick, and Horton 
represented the House, and after some days of dis- 
cussion the outcome was an agreement to resort to 
customs dues instead of bond sales as a means of 
securing the coin for interest payment. 2 

1 Cong. Globe, 2d Session, Thirty-seventh Cong., Vol. 59, p. 900, 
Feb. 20, 1862. 

2 Mr. Horace White asserts that Stevens " afterward claimed 
the credit " of substituting import duties instead of bond sales 
as a means of getting the coin for the government, but that he 
did this as a means of increasing the duties on imports for the 
sake of higher protection and not for the sake of getting the 
gold for which " he had intense scorn." Money and Banking, 
P. 155. 



280 THE LIFE OE THADDEUS STEVENS 

The bill then passed providing for the issue of 
$150,000,000 of legal tender treasury notes with the 
exception clauses; stipulating that customs dues and 
the government's interest payments should be in coin ; 
that these notes might be exchanged for bonds at 
6 per cent, or deposited on interest at 5 per cent., and 
the issue of $500,000,000 five-twenty bonds was au- 
thorized. 1 

Attempt has here been made to present fairly and 
with as much fulness as the limits of space make pos- 
sible the position of Stevens on this most important 
single act of legislation during the Civil War. For 
what he then did and said in the legal tender con- 
troversy Stevens has been severely criticized by writers 
who condemn the greenback policy. Because he said 
that these notes which he proposed would not depre- 
ciate as compared with gold, that they would be 
rapidly exchanged for five-twenty bonds, and that 
no further issues would be called for, — these expres- 
sions have been held up as glaring examples of his 
wild and untrained opinions and errors in finance, 
and as an indication of his readiness to " cast to the 
winds the teaching of experience." 2 A standard 
writer in American financial history refers, with some 
flavor of satire, to the " magic " by which Stevens 
expected that $150,000,000 of treasury notes would 
do the work of $500,000,000 in bonds." 3 Another 
writer refers to the expectation of Stevens that the 

1 There were two subsequent issues of the greenbacks on 
July 11, 1862, and March, 1S63. These increased the amount of 
the greenback currency to the final total of $450,000,000. 

-' Oberholtzer, E. P., Jay Cooke, Financier of the Civil War, 
.Vol. I, p. 171. 

3 Dewey, D. R., Financial History of the United States. 



WAYS AND MEANS IN THE WAR 281 

notes would be readily offered for bonds as a " vain 
reliance " and as " far too sanguine." l 

These criticisms are, no doubt, fair in intent, but 
they are hardly fair in fact. The full truth puts 
Stevens in a different light. Complete justice to the 
merits of the controversy, not to speak of common 
fairness to Stevens and his coadjutors, would seem to 
require that the reader should be reminded of the fact 
that these utterances of Stevens were not made with 
reference to the notes that were issued and with which 
experience was had, but with reference to the notes 
that he originally favored. There was a difference. 
The original greenbacks of which Stevens was ever 
the ready defender would certainly have had a greater 
value, in comparison with gold, than the ones the gold 
advocates finally succeeded in writing into the law. 
The notes that were issued, which Stevens so stoutly 
opposed, had denied to them two great and important 
functions of money, — customs taxes to government 
and government payment of interest. In these two 
important aspects the government dishonored its own 
notes. To the extent of these vital exceptions the 
greater pressure of money demand was placed upon 
gold ; it was made preferred money and was required 
for a large money work that the greenbacks were 
by law prevented from doing, and, consequently, the 
notes that were finally enacted took exactly the course 
with reference to gold that Stevens predicted for them. 
Instead of saying, as quoted, that the greenbacks as 
issued would pass at par with gold, he specifically 
predicted that they would depreciate. He did not 
1 Mitchell, W- C, A History of the Greenbacks. 



282 THE LIFE OF THADDEUS STEVENS 

expect depreciation under the original bill, but under 
the amended bill he did expect it. 

On the eve of the final enactment of the Legal Tender Act, 
in speaking of the " exception clause," which he denounced 
as one of the " uncouth features " of the bill imposed by 
the Senate amendments, Stevens said: "After we had 
made a currency for all, declaring it to be equal with gold, 
we made an exception and declared that it was not equal 
to gold and should be a currency only for some, thereby 
depreciating our bonds and bringing our currency below par 
which we declared was par." 

Herein I give not quite the form of Stevens' utter- 
ance but the exact meaning of it. When Stevens 
spoke of declaring paper money " at par " and making 
it " equal with gold " he must have meant only that the 
government and the people would treat the legal ten- 
ders without discrimination," that they should be recog- 
nized as equal with gold in the equal power of per- 
forming all the functions of money. Whether, if no 
legal discriminations had been made in favor of gold, 
and equal money functions had been given to paper 
and gold alike, the greenbacks and the gold would have 
exchanged at a parity, can be neither proved nor dis- 
proved. That would have depended on the quantity 
issued and the demand for money. Stevens thought 
such notes would be at parity with gold. The experi- 
ence with an issue, in 1861, of $60,000,000 in demand 
notes which, being made receivable for customs but not 
a legal tender, did not depreciate, appears to sustain his 
view; and with such a limited supply as he first pro- 
posed it is not unreasonable to conclude that the law 
of probabilities was in favor of Stevens' opinion. 



WAYS AND MEANS IN THE WAR 283 

Men who speak flippantly about his " wild-eyed no- 
tions of finance " give little evidence that they them- 
selves are either fair judges of sound opinion, or care- 
ful students of the paper money problem. Stevens 
should be allowed to stand upon his record. If the 
notes had been allowed to retain the full money quali- 
ties with which he so earnestly desired to clothe them, 
those qualities would certainly have added to their use; 
the larger use would have added to the demand for 
them; and the larger demand would have increased 
their value. What their gold value would actually 
have been is a matter of speculative opinion, but it is 
quite obvious that the criticisms here referred to do not 
apply with fairness to Stevens' real opinions and 
prophecies. 

In another respect the criticism of Stevens by fi- 
nancial writers is equally unfair. I refer to that " too 
sanguine expectation " and the " magical process " 
by which, it is said, he expected the legal tender 
notes to be turned over rapidly and repeatedly for the 
five-twenty bonds. The record reveals Stevens' clear 
recognition of the fact that these notes as they were 
finally issued would not be so exchanged for the 
five-twenties. Yet his words are misused to make him 
say the opposite of what he believed, — the words he 
applied to the legal tender notes before they were 
vitiated by the Senate amendments. He openly as- 
serted that the notes as they were made by the Senate 
amendments would not be funded into bonds. " I do 
not," he said, " expect one dollar of the $150,000,000 
of legal tender notes ever to be invested in the twenty 
years bonds, as no bonds would be sold until the cur- 



284 THE LIFE OF THADDEUS STEVENS 

rency became frightfully inflated." All classes were 
required to take these notes " unless they had money 
enough to buy the United States bonds, and then they 
shall be paid in gold, and that favored class is nobody 
but bankers and brokers." 1 " Does anybody suppose 
that they are going to give their coin at par for such 
notes as we are about to issue? They will sell the 
gold for what their consciences will allow. Was 
ever before such a machine got up for swindling the 
government and making the fortune of the gold bul- 
lionists in one single year? " 2 It was because he saw 
that the easy convertibility which he claimed for the 
original notes had been destroyed that he so vigorously 
denounced the " vicious deposit system upon interest " 
which was imposed by one of the Senate amendments. 
Under that system the holders of the legal tenders 
could deposit them in the subtreasuries and receive 5 
per cent, interest on them. This put the government 
into the position of receiving its currency on deposit 
and withholding it from use, and it effectually pre- 
vented, as Stevens said, all conversion of the legal ten- 
ders into the bonded debt. To Stevens this seemed 
like a cunning device to prevent the greenbacks from 
having a rapid and constant circulation and from do- 
ing the very work for which they were designed. He 
distinctly said so in the open House. He believed the 
gold money brokers were using every means which 
their ingenuity could devise to prevent the greenbacks 
from doing the work of money. What these gold men 

1 Stevens disregards the clients of the bankers, the small in- 
vestors who merely wished to use the banks as agencies for the 
investment of their savings and capital funds. 

- Globe, Feb. 20, 1862. 



WAYS AND MEANS IN THE WAR 2S5 

most feared, according to Stevens, was not that the le- 
gal tenders could not do the money work, but that they 
could do it, and he repeatedly denounced the proposal 
to lock them up on deposit as an adroit scheme by 
which the enemies of the greenbacks were accomplish- 
ing their purpose, — to prevent a soundly secured paper 
money from coming into use as well as to prevent their 
being offered for bonds. A year later he reiterated 
this opinion, which experience had vindicated, by call- 
ing attention to the fact that only $23,000,000 of bonds 
had been sold, since the passage of the law. 1 The 
full record of the case does not show that in this 
respect Stevens was either deceived or that he was 
obtuse, or over-sanguine. Many men in his day de- 
nounced Stevens as a vindictive political tyrant; some 
men, since his death, have accused him of being a 
knave; but no one ever took him for a fool. The 
record will show that he penetrated the problem of 
paper money in relation to the war with as keen an 
intelligence as any man of his time. 

One may reasonably believe, in harmony with tra- 
ditional opinion and the dicta of eminent writers 
(though they have assumed rather than proved their 
case), that the legal tender legislation was not wise 
nor economical. There is reasonable ground, also, 
for an opposite opinion. It is repeatedly asserted that 
that legislation added greatly to the cost of the war. 2 
The sum of $870,000,000 has been given as the un- 
necessary cost to the taxpayers caused by the use of a 
depreciated currency. 3 But the case is by no means 

1 House, January 20, 1863. 

2 Rhodes, III, pp. 566, 567. 

3 Horace White, Money and Banking, p. 162. 



286 THE LIFE OF THADDEUS STEVENS 

clear against the greenback. Not to speak of the 
claim, which may reasonably be made, that a consider- 
able part of the increased expenses of the war came 
directly from the mutilation of the greenbacks by its 
enemies, by which they were prevented from being re- 
ceived for all forms of taxes, duties, and debts, 1 yet it 
will be accepted as a matter of common agreement that 
the greenback issue gave to the government an immedi- 
ate relief, by affording a means of making payments 
that taxes could not possibly have afforded ; that, in so 
far as they were in the nature of a loan or government 
obligation, they were " a loan without interest " and 
saved an interest payment on a nominal capital equal 
to the amount of the issue; that their issue was fol- 
lowed by a notable commercial and industrial pros- 
perity; that production and exchange were greatly 
facilitated, and, therefore, government revenues were 
increased ; and that this prosperity and the rising prices 
were a potent factor in making the people both able 
and willing to meet the heavy taxes that became neces- 
sary later for the conduct of the war. This productive 
and commercial prosperity was so pronounced during 
the years from 1862 to 1865 that our exports of sta- 
ples to foreign markets were so unprecedented as to 
exceed by from two to four times the average of the 
years just prior to the war, — and this, too, at a time 
when a million of men were drawn from the field of 

1 In a later financial discussion in the House, Feb. 28, 1865, 
Stevens said: "To this unwise discrimination, creating two 
kinds of currency, and pronouncing one kind of lawful money 
inferior to the other kind of lawful money, 1 attribute most of 
the trouble which has arisen from the high price of everything, 
the enormous and unnecessary expense of the war and the con- 
stant fluctuation in the market." 



WAYS AND MEANS IN THE WAR 287 

productive labor and when it was feared that the waste 
of war would take all our national surplus and call for 
the importation of supplies from abroad. 

I think it has been demonstrated that the gold 
standard had, of necessity, to be abandoned. But if 
there are those who think otherwise, they are under 
obligations to adduce some reasonable ground for be- 
lieving that upon the gold standard and without the 
greenback, the country could have sent such an un- 
precedented volume of products to foreign markets; 
that it could have supplied with such ease and ability 
the sinews for a war of such gigantic magnitude ; and 
that the nation could have raised for its treasury within 
a single year, as it did, a thousand millions of money 
in loans and taxes. This does not seem credible, and 
it was, therefore, not unreasonable to say, as was said 
repeatedly by public men after the war was over, that 
the greenback money, after gold had become a com- 
modity to be bought and sold, was one of the most 
potent factors in promoting the success of the national 
arms. 

Nor are the usual assertions of the gold standard 
advocates, and of the historians who assume without 
knowledge the correctness of their view, at all con- 
vincing to show that the paper currency added greatly 
to the cost of the war. Undoubtedly the prices which 
the government had to pay for commodities were 
raised by the use of the paper dollar. But this was 
an increased expense only in name. What the war 
cost was the amount of labor and wealth consumed 
in waging it. 1 That could not have been increased by 

1 Journal of Political Economy, Vol. V, p. 143. 



288 THE LIFE OF THADDEUS STEVENS 

any change of the money standard. The number of 
soldiers required for the army and sailors for the 
navy, and the amount of supplies required to arm and 
feed them, — these were just the same as if the gold 
dollar had been used instead of the greenback. The 
number of dollars were increased, but the consumed 
wealth that these dollars represented was exactly the 
same. The increased cost of the war came, not in 
the use of the greenbacks to conduct the war, but in 
their disuse after the war was over, — that is, in the 
policy of paying the creditors of the government 
dollars of higher value than they had loaned. 1 The 
capital that was borrowed represented so much wealth, 
but the capital that was returned represented nearly 
twice as much wealth. But that policy of adding to 
the cost of the war was not the policy of Stevens 
and the Greenbacker, nor were they responsible for it. 
It was the policy of those who combated and defeated 
Stevens' greenback legislation. If only the values that 
were borrowed had been returned to the lenders, the 
war would have cost essentially the same on either 
money standard, — if it had been possible to conduct 
it at all on the specie basis. 

In view of the whole controversy and of Stevens' 
persistent and consistent efforts to prevent the gold 
legislation that was here secured by the " interests," 
— those that were working in favor of the gold dealers 
and bankers — it is slightly ironical for the gold advo- 

1 " The depreciation of the currency then made no difference 
in the amount of wealth consumed during the war. The only 
way in which it did make a real increase in its cost came in the 
repayment of the debt." Mitchell, " The Greenbacks and the 
Cost of the War," Journal of Political Economy, Vol. V, p. 
144 (1897). 



.WAYS AND MEANS IN THE WAR 289 

cates to attribute to Stevens and other original friends 
of the Legal Tender Act the failures and shortcomings 
of that measure. Those interested in money lending 
and gold holdings, while they could not defeat the Legal 
Tender Act, accomplished their principal purpose by 
another process, — the purpose of compelling the gov- 
ernment to sell its bonds in the open market for what 
they would command in gold. They were permitted 
to accomplish this purpose in spite of the fact that 
Stevens had made it perfectly obvious that the bond 
sale was certain to result in a discount ruinous to 
the public interest. The capitalist opposition to the 
greenback legislation was not at all marked nor strenu- 
ous after the interests of their particular class had 
been safeguarded by the Senate amendments. With 
more recent history before us of the ways by which 
moneyed interests control legislation at Washington, 
we may conclude that Stevens was not far from wrong 
when he attributed this particular " failure " of the 
Greenback Act to a " cunningly devised scheme " of a 
creditor and bondholding class who had gold in con- 
siderable quantities to offer the government, under con- 
ditions that would enable them to dictate the terms of 
its sale. 

What would have resulted in financial conditions if 
the original Greenback Act had gone through; what 
the expenses of the war, measured in money, would 
have been; how a real Stevens greenback without any 
exception clause would have been rated in terms of 
gold, — all this is entirely a matter of speculation. It 
is certainly not to be settled by the dogmatic assertion 
of those who choose to flatter themselves as the only 



290 THE LIFE OF THADDEUS STEVENS 

" advocates of sound money," or by the epithet of 
ridicule and denunciation against greenbacks and 
Greenbackers usually indulged in by the orthodox ad- 
vocates of the gold standard. After the experience of 
recent years, the advocates of gold as the only stable 
measure of value can not much longer perpetrate the 
absurd farce of calling it a " standard." Happily that 
ever-shifting, not to say ever-cheating, " standard " is 
not now in the minds of the creditor and salaried 
classes quite so sacred a thing as it was a half-century, 
or even two decades, ago. More than a thousand mil- 
lions of new gold within a decade and the consequent 
fall in its value (or the rise of gold prices, which is 
the same thing) are leading " classical writers," and 
perhaps even the intolerant dogmatists of the gold 
standard school, to question whether the yellow metal 
was really designed in the original councils of the 
Almighty as the one standard of honest money for 
the realm. 1 The ax is being laid at the root of the 

1 The director of the mint in his estimate of the output of 
gold for the year 191 1, places its value at $466,000,000. That 
was but a slight increase over the years immediately preceding. 
But ten years ago the gold output was valued at only $262,- 
000,000, while twenty years ago it was only $130,000,000, and 
the average for the decade of 1880 to 1890 was but a little over 
$100,000,000. The product of gold from the Transvaal has 
grown in ten years from $9,000,000 to $191,000,000. It is not 
contended that the recent rise of prices is to be attributed to 
the gold flood alone, yet few reputable economists will deny that 
it is the most effective cause. The phenomenal increase of gold 
has brought us the " fifty-cent dollar " which was so decried 
in the notable Bryan campaign of 1896. The gold " standard " 
was even more inconstant and unreliable in Stevens' day than 
in ours, the difference being that in Civil War times the metal 
was scarce, while in these times of high prices it is abundant. 

Professor Irving Fisher, of the Department of Economics of 
Yale University, has recently presented much evidence and sound 
argument to prove that the present high cost of living is due 
primarily " to gold and credit inflation." He is reminding the 



WAYS AND MEANS IN THE WAR 291 

tree, as the radical custom always was with Thaddeus 
Stevens. The value of gold has so calamitously 
changed in the wrong (?) direction in recent years 
that the orthodox may well question the divinity that 
has always been supposed to hedge about the yellow 
metal as a standard of value. It is barely possible 
that they may be led to see that Thaddeus Stevens, 
the Greenbacker, even fifty years ago in the midst 
of the trials of war, had an intelligent conception of 
the need of a uniform national currency, and that he 
saw and understood the merits of gold in relation to 
money as clearly as some of his hasty and intolerant 
critics. 

Stevens looked upon this struggle over a national 
currency as a contest between Privilege and Democ- 
racy. America has never produced a more power- 
ful, more consistent, and more uncompromising foe 
to Privilege than Thaddeus Stevens. In this cause he 
felt and spoke for the people with the same fervent 
democratic spirit that characterized his opposition to 
slavery. He knew the motives that were actuating 
men in their importunities for government favors. 
He had as keen and as sensitive an appreciation of the 
financial honor of the nation as any man of his time. 
He saw the bearings of this financial legislation upon 
the burdens which his government was undergoing 
and upon the prosperity of his fellow-countrymen. 

public of what ought to be obvious to all, that gold inflation is 
as bad as any other kind, and that sound money that is really 
honest demands emancipation " from fluctuations in either di- 
rection of the purchasing value of the monetary unit," and that 
business "may suffer from gold inflation which comes from 
natural causes as truly as from inflation through legislative enact- 
ment." This helps to get the dust out of the eyes of the public. 







292 THE LIFE OF THADDEUS STEVENS 

His record upon this subject, as upon all others, mani- 
fested a yearning for the welfare and prosperity of the 
& masses, an unfaltering purpose to resist special favors 
and to promote a democratic equality for all. He had 
a burning scorn for graft, pretense, and hypocrisy. 
He proved that he was ready to stand, like a great 
commoner in the halls of legislation, to speak for the 
interests of the toiling masses and the honest wealth- 
producers of his country, and in resistance to those 
who were seeking special privilege in legislation. The 
time will come when his opinion and services in this 
great crisis will bring a reward in appreciation and 
gratitude that has not yet been accorded to him. 



CHAPTER XII 

RECONSTRUCTION DURING THE WAR 

TN the latter part of April, i86j2, New Orleans was 
■*■ captured by the Federal forces. Soon after this 
event Union men under the protection of the army be- 
gan to form associations to develop loyal sentiment 
in the state. There were two parties of opinion 
among those who wished to restore a Union state 
government. One wished to have an election un- 
der the old Constitution of 1852, on the ground that 
the act of secession and the Constitution of 1861 were 
void and, consequently, that the Constitution of 1852 
was still in force. The other wished to hold a con- 
stitutional convention, recognize the abolition of slav- 
ery, and form a new constitution. 

In August, 1862, General George F. Shepley, who 
had been mayor of New Orleans under the military ad- 
ministration of General Benjamin F. Butler, was ap- 
pointed by President Lincoln as Military Governor 
of Louisiana. This may be regarded as the first step 
in the restoration of Federal government in that state. 
It was the first step in any attempt at reconstruction. 

In December, 1862, Governor-General Shepley, by 
permission of the President, ordered an election for 
members of Congress in the districts over which his 
military jurisdiction extended. Lincoln cautioned the 

293 



294 THE LIFE OF THADDEUS STEVENS 

Governor-General against the choice of Northern men 
at the point of the bayonet, which, he said, would be 
" disgraceful and outrageous." 

Two citizens of Louisiana, Messrs. Hahn and Flan- 
ders, were elected to Congress at an election in which 
7760 votes were cast, and on February 9, 1863, these 
men were admitted to seats in the House of Repre- 
sentatives. Their being seated shows that Congress at 
this time was disposed to encourage and promote an 
easy restoration of the seceded states and to recognize 
any respectable body of loyal people in Louisiana as 
the " State," if they would act in harmony with the 
Federal authority. 

Lincoln wished to avert the inconveniences arising 
from military occupation. The way, he said, was for 
the " people of Louisiana simply to take their place 
in the Union upon the old terms." * " Let the people 
of Louisiana who wish protection to person and 
property reach forth their hands and take it ; let them 
reinaugurate the national authority and set up a state 
government under the Constitution. The army will 
be withdrawn as soon as such state government can 
dispense with its presence; and the people of the state 
can then, upon the old constitutional terms, govern 
themselves to their own liking." 2 

Lincoln was evidently anxious to restore old re- 
lations, and he was disposed, as far as the executive 
power was concerned, to offer most liberal terms, re- 
quiring as few conditions and changes as possible. 

Nothing more was done with reconstruction in 

1 Works of Lincoln, pp. 214-215. Letter to Reverdy Johnson. 

2 Lincoln's Letter to Bullett, July 28, 1862, Works. 



RECONSTRUCTION DURING WAR 295 

Louisiana until December, 1863. It was then that 
Lincoln set forth his plan of reconstruction, as far as 
he may be said to have had a plan, in his message to 
Congress and in his accompanying proclamation of 
December 8, 1863. In his proclamation which may be 
called a Proclamation of Amnesty and Reconstruc- 
tion, Lincoln offered full pardon (with excepted 
classes) for all participation in rebellion, " with res- 
toration of all rights of property, except as to slaves," 
upon condition that every person so pardoned should 
take an oath thenceforth faithfully to support, protect, 
and defend the Constitution of the United States, and 
to abide by all laws and proclamations of the Federal 
government made during the existing Rebellion hav- 
ing reference to slaves, so far as not modified or de- 
clared void by a decision of the Supreme Court. 

The exempted classes to whom the amnesty did not 
apply, were all civil and diplomatic officers of the 
Confederate States ; all military and naval officers of 
the Confederate States above the rank of Colonel; all 
who left the judicial, congressional, or military service 
of the United States to aid the Confederacy; and " all 
who have engaged in any way in treating colored per- 
sons, or white persons in charge of such, otherwise 
than lawfully as prisoners of war." 

Whenever in any one of the insurrectionary states 
" a number of voters, not less than one-tenth in num- 
ber of the votes cast in such state at the presidential 
election of i860, shall establish a state government 
which shall be republican, such shall be recognized as 
the true government of the state " ; and such state was 
to receive the benefit of the guarantee clause " of the 



296 THE LIFE OF THADDEUS STEVENS 

Constitution in so far as it gave to the President 
power " to guarantee to each state a republican form 
of government. The state was also promised pro- 
tection against invasion and domestic violence. Any 
provision adopted by such state government concern- 
ing free men which shall recognize their permanent 
freedom will not be objected to by the national gov- 
ernment. Subject only to these modifications the 
newly constructed loyal state government was to be 
as it had been before the Rebellion, in name, boundary, 
subdivisions, constitution, and its general code of laws. 
It was recognized that whether members sent to Con- 
gress from any state shall be admitted to seats rested 
exclusively with the two houses and not to any ex- 
tent with the Executive. 

This proclamation was intended to present to the 
people of the insurrectionary states a mode by which 
the national authority and loyal state governments 
might be reestablished ; and " while the mode is the 
best the Executive can suggest with his present im- 
pressions it must not be understood that no other pos- 
sible mode would be acceptable." 

Lincoln asserted in his annual message of the same 
date that in this proclamation nothing had been at- 
tempted but what " is amply justified by the Constitu- 
tion." He recognized that to guarantee and protect a 
revived state government constructed from the very 
elements against whose hostility and violence it was 
to be protected was absurd. " There must be a test 
by which to separate the opposing elements so as to 
build only from the sound; and that test is a suffi- 
ciently liberal one which accepts as sound whoever will 



RECONSTRUCTION DURING WAR 297 

make a sworn recantation of his former unsound- 
ness." 

As a test for the recognition of statehood and res- 
toration to the Union Lincoln felt that he had a right 
to require not only an oath of allegiance to the Con- 
stitution and the Union, but also to the laws and 
proclamations in regard to slavery. These had been 
of aid in suppressing the Rebellion; there must be a 
pledge for their maintenance. To abandon them 
would be " an astounding breach of faith." He 
would not retract or modify the Emancipation Proc- 
lamation. Support of these should be included in the 
oath; and the Executive, Lincoln contended, might 
lawfully claim it in return for pardon and restora- 
tion of forfeited rights which he had " clear constitu- 
tional power to withhold altogether, or grant upon 
terms which he shall deem wisest for the public in- 
terest." This part of the oath he deemed subject to 
modification by legislation or judicial decision. 

As a reason for his proclamation at this time Presi- 
dent Lincoln said that there seemed to be elements in 
some states ready for resumption, but they remained 
inactive apparently for want of a plan of action. " By 
the proclamation a plan is presented which may be ac- 
cepted as a rallying point, and which they are assured 
in advance will not be rejected here. This may bring 
them to act sooner than they otherwise would." 1 
President Lincoln was under the impression that a 
majority of the people in all of the seceded states were 
really in favor of the Union, and he wished to erect 
a standard around which these loyal people would be 

1 Lincoln's Message, December 8, 1863. 



298 THE LIFE OF THADDEUS STEVENS 

encouraged to rally and make their influence potent for 
the restoration of the Federal authority. 

In pursuance of this policy of Lincoln, on January 
8, 1864, a Free State Convention was held in New 
Orleans in harmony with the national administration. 
It accepted the Emancipation Proclamation as the 
basis of its action. General Banks, the military com- 
mander, by a proclamation of January 11, 1864, fol- 
lowing the request of the convention, appointed 
February 22, 1864, for an election for state officers, 
and March 4th for their installation. Banks recognized 
the Constitution of 1852 as still in force; the act of 
secession and the Constitution of 1861 were held as 
void. No election was ordered for members of the 
Legislature for the obvious reason that there was only 
one-third of the state within the Union lines where 
an election could be held, and, therefore, there were 
not enough counties, or constituencies, to elect a ma- 
jority of the Legislature. Less than a majority was 
not a quorum; no business could be transacted, no 
state officers could be legally paid by the state with- 
out a quorum, as that could be done only by an ap- 
propriation made by law. Yet it was held that a 
Governor could be elected by a few loyal people under 
the protection of Federal arms. 

More than eleven thousand votes were cast in the 
election for Governor, or more than a fifth of the vote 
of i860. Michael Hahn was elected Governor as the 
representative of the President's policy, and was in- 
stalled on March 4, 1864. The next step was an or- 
der from the new Governor for an election of dele- 
gates to a constitutional convention to revise the con- 






RECONSTRUCTION DURING WAR 299 

stitution so as to bring it into harmony with the new 
conditions created by the war. On March 15, 1864, 
President Lincoln recognized Hahn as Governor of 
Louisiana, " invested until further orders with the 
powers exercised hitherto by the Military Governor of 
Louisiana." He was to be a trial Governor in a trial 
state created and sustained by military power, whose 
existence was to continue at the discretion of the ex- 
ecutive power of the United States. 

President Lincoln congratulated Hahn on having 
fixed his name in history as " the first Free-State Gov- 
ernor of Louisiana," and in speaking of the approach- 
ing state convention for the formation of a new 
constitution and the defining of the elective franchise, 
President Lincoln suggested " for your private con- 
sideration, whether some of the colored people may not 
be let in, as for instance the very intelligent, and espe- 
cially those who have fought gallantly in our ranks." 
This was one of the first official suggestions of negro 
suffrage. 1 

Lincoln's plan of reconstruction for Louisiana was 
completed by the state convention which met in April, 
1864. By a vote of seventy to sixteen the convention 
declared slavery to be abolished forever within the 
state. Suffrage was restricted to white males above 
the age of twenty-one, but the legislature was em- 
powered to confer the voting privilege on negroes in 
harmony with the principles suggested by Mr. Lincoln. 
On September 6, 1864, the Constitution was adopted 
by the people by a vote of 6836 in its favor to 1566 
against it. As the total vote of Louisiana in i860 was 

1 Blaine, II, pp. 39-40. 



.-• 



300 THE LIFE OF THADDEUS STEVENS 

50,510 it was seen that the new state government had 
more than fulfilled the requirement of the President's 
proclamation, about 16 per cent, of the vote of i860 
being cast in the election for the adoption of the con- 
stitution. 

V \ Thus in the fall of 1864 Lincoln was able to say 
that " a ^ery fair proportion of the people of Louisi- 
i£" . i** ana have inaugurated a new state government, mak- 
ing an excellent new constitution, — better for the poor 
$? black than we have in Illinois. This was done under 

military protection, directed by me, in the belief, still 
securely entertained, that with such a nucleus around 
which to build we could get the state into position 
again sooner than otherwise." * 

The President's plan of reconstruction had so far 
been completed, and Louisiana was under the form 
of a loyal government. But it was known by all that 
this reconstructed government could not maintain it- 
self for a day if the military support of the nation 
should be withdrawn. Similar action was taken in 
Arkansas. Isaac Murphy, a Union man, was elected 
Governor in that state, an anti-slavery constitution 
was adopted, a government was installed and Senators 
and Representatives were elected to Congress, — all 
in the early spring of 1864. 

This was the plan that the President proposed to 
put into operation for the other states as fast as the 
circumstances and the advance of the national arms 
would permit. 

We turn now to see how this presidential work in 

1 November 14, 1864, Works, Vol. II, p. 597. 



RECONSTRUCTION DURING WAR 301 

reconstruction was received in congressional circles. 
The President's scheme and all that had been done 
in pursuance of it were destined to fall between two 
fires in the halls of Congress. The Democrats who 
were always ready to put themselves in opposition to 
whatever the President undertook for the suppression 
of the Rebellion, fell upon it with their usual cries 
of " usurpation " and " violation of the Constitution." 
The blessed Constitution was the constant resource 
upon which they relied to hamper and embarrass the 
administration as much as they could. According to 
this conservative Democratic view, this " Amnesty- 
Reconstruction Proclamation "of the President was 
a naked act of power, a rank usurpation for the aboli- 
tion of slavery, prompted by hostility to the domestic 
policy of the South more than by a desire to restore 
the Union. The fact of war was nothing; the sacred 
Constitution was still unimpaired, and the President's 
powers were as much prescribed and limited in war 
as in peace. The only oath that Lincoln had a right 
to impose on the people of Louisiana was an oath 
to support the Constitution; the oath that he had pro- 
posed was unknown to that great instrument. " It 
is loyalty to proclamations, not to the Constitution, on 
which Mr. Lincoln would rebuild his republican 
states." ..." A state government founded on one- 
tenth of the people and dictated by himself; shades of 
our fathers! are these the kind of republican states that 
are to perpetuate the American Union ! " 1 The 

1 Holman, of Indiana, in the House, March 12, 1864, Globe, 
pp. 1063-1064. Holman's speech is here interpreted as a typical 
speech of the Democratic opposition. 



302 THE LIFE OF THADDEUS STEVENS 

states in rebellion, it was maintained, were still states 
in the Union. The Constitution embraces them. The 
President has no authority to fix any conditions not 
fixed by the Constitution, as 1 a basis for their recogni- 
tion as states. His only duty is to execute the law, 
to subdue the armed power that for the time being 
suspends the authority of the Constitution; and it is 
not within his province to organize civil government. 
When the Rebellion is subdued the states are restored 
by that very fact, without conditions and without 
change. No note was to be taken of the wrong and 
penalty attaching to rebellion. 

The Democrats, therefore, rejected the President's 
plan for restoration because he had imposed a con- 
dition for the seceded states — namely, the abolition 
of slavery — that the Constitution did not impose. 
He was acting in excess of power and was requiring 
too much, in violation of the sacred Democratic 
slogan, " The Union as it was, the Constitution as it 
is," 

On the other hand, Lincoln's policy fell athwart the 
opinions and purposes of the radical anti-slavery men 
in Congress. According to these radical congres- 
sional leaders the President was requiring too little, 
and he was, as they also held, acting in excess of 
power in presuming, without the assent of Congress, 
to reestablish civil government in conquered terri- 
tory, and in reorganizing states there, and in lay- 
ing down conditions on which they might be restored 
to the Union. All these were functions of civil gov- 
ernment, not of military power; they were preroga- 



RECONSTRUCTION DURING WAR 303 

tives of the law-making body, not of the Executive; 
they belonged to Congress, not to the President. 

By the time the Arkansas Senators came to claim 
seats in the Senate it was seen that the majority of 
the Senate were not in sympathy with what was called 
the Lincoln " ten per cent., short-hand method of re- 
construction." Mr. Sumner offered a resolution, on 
May 27, 1864, asserting that a state "pretending to 
secede from the Union and battling against the general 
government to maintain that position must be regarded 
as a rebel state subject to military occupation and 
without representation on this floor until it has been 
readmitted by a vote of both houses of Congress." 
This was the position that the two houses of Congress 
subsequently took toward President Johnson. The 
Senate now took the position that the Rebellion was 
" not so far suppressed in Arkansas as to entitle that 
state to representation in Congress," and the Arkan- 
sas Senators were refused their seats. 

This radical disposition in opposition to Lincoln's 
work in reconstruction was also reflected in the House, 
especially by Stevens, at the opening of Congress in 
December, 1863. Before the Thirty-eighth Congress 
was organized, while the Clerk was still presiding, 
Stevens called for the credentials " of the persons 
claiming to be representatives of the so-called state of 
Louisiana." After the credentials were read Stevens 
offered a resolution directing that the names of the 
members from Louisiana be stricken from the roll of 
the House. This was objected to on a point of order. 
The point of order was sustained by the Clerk, where- 



304 THE LIFE OF THADDEUS STEVENS 

upon Stevens withdrew his motion, being satisfied with 
having made his protest against the appearance of the 
names of the Louisiana members on the rolls, since he 
wished in no way to recognize, even by silence or ac- 
quiescence, the legitimacy of any " state " in Louisi- 
ana. 

In his notable speech of January 22, 1864, Stevens 
discussed at some length the constitutional status of 
the seceded states and their relation to the United 
States. He deplored the great confusion of ideas 
and diversity of opinions, and he urged upon Congress 
and the country the essential importance of a clear, 
safe, and logical theory on that subject. He again set 
forth his view that the South, being de facto an in- 
dependent belligerent, the Constitution and the laws of 
the Union were abrogated in respect to these states 
and their people ; that the law of nations alone would 
limit the conqueror in determining the conditions to 
be imposed as the basis of a restored Union. 1 This 
would strengthen the nation, give the general govern- 
ment a free hand, and simplify the problem. In op- 
position to this practical policy he described the con- 
fusing and weakening theory that the rebellious states 
were still in the Union, entitled to the protection of the 
Constitution and the laws ; that whenever these " way- 
ward sisters " choose to abandon their frivolities and 
come back and send Senators and Representatives to 
Congress, then, notwithstanding all they have done, we 
must receive them, give them all the privileges of 
loyal men and loyal states, and " throw, over them 

1 See p. 218. 



RECONSTRUCTION DURING WAR 305 

the protecting shield of the Union, of which it is said 
they had never ceased to be members." 1 

To Stevens a decision between these two views was 
a matter of vast moment to the outcome of the war 
and the future of the country. He was dissatisfied 
with the mixture of military and civil processes in 
Lincoln's work and he was determined that no state- 
hood should be recognized and civil rights restored 
in the South until Congress, representing the sovereign 
people of the loyal states, was satisfied with the con- 
ditions and guarantees imposed. To what Lincoln 
had done, if he were acting as a military conqueror, 
by the rights of war, he had no objections; but if 
what he had done were to be judged from the point 
of view of his functions as a civil ruler, as President 
of the United States, then Stevens felt that there were 
very weighty and decisive objections. He acknowl- 
edged that his own views as to the war powers of the 
government were not acceptable to either house of 
Congress when he announced them in the extra ses- 
sion of 1 86 1, but now he professed to see in the 
President's plan an endorsement of his views, and 
he sought to show that only on the basis of his 
(Stevens') doctrine could Lincoln's plan of reconstruc- 
tion, or any other be approved and carried out. 

" In details," he said, " we may not quite agree ; \ , 
but his plan of reconstruction assumes the same general (^ 
grounds. It proposes to treat the rebel territory as 
a conqueror alone would treat it. His plan is wholly 
outside of and unknown to the Constitution. But it 

1 Globe, January 22, 1864, p. 316. 



306 THE LIFE 0E THADDEUS STEVENS 

is within the legitimate province of the laws of war. 
His legal mind has carefully studied the law of na- 
tions and reached a just conclusion. 

" The condition of the rebel states having been thus 
fixed, reconstruction becomes an easier question, be- 
cause we are untrammeled by municipal contracts and 
laws, — that refuge of conservative sympathizers with 
our ' erring brethren.' The President may not strike 
as direct a blow with a battering-ram against this 
Babel as some impetuous gentlemen would desire; 
but with his usual shrewdness and caution he is pick- 
ing out the mortar from the joints until eventually the 
whole tower will fall. . . . When the free North shall 
be united ; when that odious party which is inspired by 
the love of slavery alone shall have sunk into utter 
contempt and be despised of all men, then will the 
traitors' hearts sink within them; then will the brave 
freemen of the North, having crushed into atoms 
the ephemeral empire whose cornerstone was slavery, 
establish a united and enduring nation on the solid 
foundation of universal freedom." 1 

The rising opposition in Congress to the President's 
work in reconstruction soon found expression in the 
shape of a congressional measure. On December 19, 
1863, on motion of Mr. Henry Winter Davis, of 
Maryland, that part of the President's message relating 
to " the duty of the United States to guarantee a 
republican form of government to the states in which 

1 Globe, January 22, 1864, pp. 318-319. In other parts of this 
speech which I have incorporated in a previous chapter, Stevens 
indicates his fundamental objection to any plan of reconstruc- 
tion that would treat the rebel states as states within the Union, 
with rights under the Constitution. See pp. 218-304. 



RECONSTRUCTION DURING WAR 307 

the governments recognized by the United States have 
been abrogated or overthrown," was referred to " a 
select committee of nine to be named by the Speaker, 
which shall report the bills necessary for carrying into 
execution the foregoing guarantee." Davis's purpose 
was to have Congress see to it, when armed resistance 
had ceased in the area of rebellion, that the restored 
governments should be republican in form. 

Mr. Davis, the chairman of this special committee, 
introduced a bill in the House designed to carry out 
this purpose * which came into the open House for 
discussion on March 22, 1864. This bill, after pass- 
ing the House, was managed in the Senate by Mr. 
Wade, of Ohio, and it came to be known as the 
" Wade-Davis Plan of Reconstruction." It was what 
Congress saw fit to propose as a counter plan to that 
of the President. Its provisions may be briefly sum- 
marized as follows: 

1. The President was to appoint Provisional Gov- 
ernors, who, as soon as military resistance ceased, 
were to enroll the white voters and submit to each 
voter an oath to support the Constitution. 

2. When a majority of these voters should take the 
oath of allegiance the Governor was to order an elec- 
tion of delegates to a constitutional convention. 2 

3. It was to be the duty of the convention to declare 
for the people of the state their submission to the 
Constitution of the United States, and to involve three 

1 February 15, 1864. 

2 In the original draft of the bill one-tenth of the voters were 
required to take the oath before an election of delegates to a 
convention might be held, but opposition and pressure brought 
Davis to accept an amendment requiring a majority. Davis in 
the Globe, May 4, 1864, p. 2107. 



308 THE LIFE OE THADDEUS STEVENS 

fundamental provisions in their organic law : First, 
no one who had held an important office under the 
Confederate government or a military office as high 
as the rank of Colonel, should be allowed to vote for, 
or be a member of, the Legislature, or to vote for, 
or be elected, Governor; second, slavery should be 
forever prohibited and freedom of all persons guar- 
anteed; third, no debt, state or Confederate, created 
in aid of the Rebellion should ever be paid. 

4. When the new state constitution should be so 
framed and had been adopted by a majority of the 
popular vote as enrolled, the Provisional Governor 
was to notify the President and the President, after 
obtaining the assent of Congress, was to recognize 
the state government as the legitimate and constitu- 
tional government, under which Senators and Repre- 
sentatives to Congress might be chosen by the people. 

5. The bill abolished slavery at once in all the re- 
bellious states and imposed penalties for the violation 
of this provision. 

It will be seen that this plan differed with the Presi- 
dent's in three essential respects. In the first place 
it claimed that reconstruction was a legislative prob- 
lem, not an executive problem. In the second place, 
it required the loyalty of at least a majority of the 
adult whites, instead of onty one-tenth. In the third 
place, it asserted the power of Congress to abolish 
slavery within the limits of the rebellious states, deal- 
ing with the states in this respect as districts, or terri- 
tories, under the control of the central government, 
and not as states in the Union. 

The bill, and Mr. Davis, its author, in defense of 



RECONSTRUCTION DURING WAR 309 

it, spoke of the rebellious states as " states whose 
governments have been overthrown." The purpose of 
the national legislature in this act was to restore civil 
government on the basis of permanent peace. " The 
bill," said Mr. Davis, " challenges the support of all 
who consider slavery the cause of the Rebellion, as 
well as those who seek to insure freedom and peace, 
the first fruits of the war, by adequate legislation." 
Davis claimed that his measure was entitled to the 
support of those who held, like Stevens, that the 
Rebellion " has placed the citizens of the rebel states 
beyond the protection of the Constitution, and that 
Congress, therefore, has supreme power over them 
as over a conquered enemy," as well as of " that other 
class who think that they have not ceased to be citi- 
zens and states of the Union, though incapable of 
exercising political privileges under the Constitution, 
but that Congress is charged with a high political 
power by the Constitution to guarantee republican gov- 
ernments in the states, and that this is the proper time 
and mode of exercising it." 

This power to guarantee republican government in 
the states is one of the class of plenary powers con- 
ferred upon Congress, in its nature without limitation, 
intended to meet just such emergencies in our na- 
tional life. The secession governments were usurpa- 
tions against the authority of the United States. 
They do not recognize the Constitution of the United 
States, and the Constitution can not recognize them. 
" There can be no republican government within the 
limits of the United States that does not recognize, 
but does repudiate, the Constitution." The seceding 



310 THE LIFE OE THADDEUS STEVENS 

governments, being usurpations, can not be guaranteed ; 
they must be suppressed and expelled. When we have 
suppressed the military usurpation in the South there 
will be no form of state authority that Congress can 
recognize. " Our success will be the overthrow of 
all semblance of government in the rebel states. The 
government of the United States is, then, in fact the 
only government existing in those states, and it is 
there charged to guarantee them republican govern- 
ments. . . . The duty of guaranteeing means to accom- 
plish the result ; . . . that republican government shall 
exist ; that everything inconsistent with it shall be 
weeded out," Congress itself being the judge. . . . 
" Until Congress recognize a state government organ- 
ized under its auspices, there is no government in the 
rebel states except the authority of Congress." 

Davis asserted, what every one recognized to be 
true, that there is now no rebel state held by the United 
States, enough of whose population adheres to the 
Union to be entrusted with the government of the 
state. " One-tenth can not control nine-tenths. Five- 
tenths are nowhere willing to undertake the control 
of the other five-tenths. Nowhere does such a pro- 
portion exist who can safely be trusted with the 
powers of a state government, carrying with it the 
right of taxation, the existence of courts, the appoint- 
ment of officers, the command of the militia, the 
supremacy in the internal concerns of the state, and 
the right to participate in the government of the United 
States, by Representatives, Senators and Electors." 
No one believes that " any respectable proportion of 
the people of the Southern States now in rebellion are 



RECONSTRUCTION DURING WAR 311 

willing to accept any terms that even our opponents 
on the other side of the House are willing to offer 
them." 

Davis denounced Lincoln's plan as a government 
"of doubtful existence, half civil and half military; 
neither a temporary government by law of Congress, 
nor a state government; something as unknown to 
the Constitution as the rebel government that refuses 
to recognize it." The proclamation of the President 
to which an oath of allegiance is required may subse- 
quently be found by the state courts to be invalid. 
The proclamation declared that certain negroes were 
to be recognized as free, while others were to remain 
slave. Were these proclamations on slavery, to which 
an oath of adherence is demanded, within the author- 
ity of the Executive? " How local state governments 
created by the Southern people will decide such a 
question no one can doubt." If left to their choice they 
will maintain slavery, but if they are required to give 
it up as a condition precedent to restoration they will 
abandon it. This must not be left as the President 
leaves it, to be merely a judicial question. It must 
be settled by a supreme political jurisdiction, and in- 
stead of arguing before the courts the legality of the 
proclamation of freedom it must be enacted into law. 
The paramount political power of Congress should 
proceed to reorganize governments in those states, to 
impose such conditions as it thinks necessary, to refuse 
to recognize any governments there which do not pro- 
hibit slavery forever, and to take the responsibility of 
saying, in the face of those clamoring for speedy recog- 
nition of governments tolerating slavery, that the 



3 i2 THE LIFE OF THADDEUS STEVENS 

safety of the people of the United States is the 
supreme law, and that Congress is the body author- 
ized to express that will. 1 

As between these principles and those on which the 
President appeared to be acting, Davis and the con- 
gressional leaders undoubtedly represented the safer 
and the sounder political science. If the states were 
out of their normal relation to the Union, without 
equal rights with the other states, and if conditions were 
to be imposed for their restoration, Congress was un- 
doubtedly the power to determine what rights were 
impaired and what the conditions of restoration should 
be. The doctrine of Davis and his bill was not as 
clear and as unmistakable as that of Stevens ; there 
was more of uncertainty and inconsistency about it. 
It denied the simple " restoration theory " of the Dem- 
ocrats, but it did not distinctly affirm, with Stevens, 
that the seceded states were out of the Union, without 
any rights under the Constitution. If Stevens' posi- 
tion were admitted, namely, that the Southern States 
were in the Confederacy and not in the Union, which 
was the undoubted fact, all bodies of opinion in Con- 
gress would then agree that the states would have to 
be reorganized, readmitted, and that power could be 
exercised only by Congress itself. 2 

This measure of the majority party, like Lincoln's 
policy, met with Democratic opposition, as was ex- 
pected. Mr. George H. Pendleton, of Ohio, gave, 
perhaps, the most forcible and outspoken expression to 

1 Henry Winter Davis, in the House, March 22, 1864, Globe, 
Appendix, First Session, Thirty-eighth Congress, pp. 83-85. 

2 See Holman's speech, Globe, March 12, 1864, p. 1064. 



RECONSTRUCTION DURING WAR 313 

this opposition. " At last," he said, " the mask has 
been thrown off, the pretenses laid aside, and the pur- 
poses of the Republican party have been acknowl- 
edged," — in this bill that " defines their ideas of Union 
and interprets their construction of the Constitution." 
" We have had double-dealing, hypocrisy, and fraud 
for the last three years, — false professions, false 
names, double-faced measures. We have had armies 
raised, taxes collected, battles fought under the pre- 
tense that the war was for the Union, the old Union, 
the Union of the Constitution. These were now seen 
to be mere catchwords for the patriotic people, to be 
sneered at in secret conclave as devices to ensnare the 
innocent, to deceive the ignorant, to coax the obsti- 
nate. Now the veil is drawn and the revolutionary 
purpose of the party is revealed. That purpose is to 
destroy the government, to change its form and spirit, 
to make a new Union, to ingraft upon it new principles, 
new theories, new powers. It is rebellion against the 
Constitution, differing in nothing from its armed ene- 
mies except in the weapons of its warfare. 1 

" Those who support this revolutionary bill should 
admit that they are revolutionists, that they do not 
wish to restore the old order and the old Union. . . . 
Where is the authority to declare state governments 
overthrown, to reconstruct them, to appoint a Gov- 
ernor, to call a convention, to remodel state constitu- 
tions, to fix cmalifications for voters and state officers, 
to dictate what debts a state shall or shall not pay, or 

1 1 do not here make exact quotations from Pendleton's 
speech, but I reduce and summarize what he said without im- 
pairing his meaning. 



314 THE LIFE OF THADDEUS STEVENS 

to declare that slavery shall not exist within the limits 
of a state? The Constitution gives to Congress no 
authority to prescribe a single one of these conditions, 
as proposed by the bill; and a republican form of 
government within the Union is compatible with a 
state's refusal to provide for any of them. 

" Virginia, in repealing the ordinance by which she 
ratified the Constitution, merely breaks a link of con- 
federation, annuls a bond of union; she repeals but a 
single law, while her constitution, her laws, her po- 
litical polity, are untouched. 

" Gentlemen must not palter in a double sense. 
Those acts of secession are either valid or they are in- 
valid. If they are valid they separated the state from 
the Union. If they are invalid they are void; they 
have no effect. The state officers who act upon them 
are rebels to the Federal government ; the states are not 
destroyed ; their constitutions are not abrogated ; their 
officers are committing illegal acts, for which they are 
liable to punishment; the states have never left the 
Union, but so soon as their officers shall perform 
their duties or other officers shall assume their places, 
will again perform the duties imposed and enjoy the 
privileges conferred by the Federal compact; and this 
not by virtue of a new ratification of the Constitution, 
nor a new admission by the Federal government, but 
by virtue of the original ratification and the constant, 
uninterrupted maintenance of position in the Federal 
Union since that date. . . . 

" The seceded states are either in the Union or out 
of it. If in the Union their constitutions are un- 
touched, their state governments are maintained, their 



RECONSTRUCTION DURING WAR 315 

citizens are entitled to all political rights, except so far 
as they may be deprived of them by the criminal law 
which they have infracted. . . . 

" The monstrous doctrine of this bill and its authors 
has no foundation in the Constitution. It subjects all 
the states to the will of Congress; it places their insti- 
tutions at the feet of Congress. It creates in Con- 
gress an absolute unqualified despotism. The rights 
of the people of the state are nothing, their will is 
nothing". My own state of Ohio is liable at any mo- 
ment to be called in question for her constitution. She 
does not permit negroes to vote. If this doctrine be 
true, Congress may decide that this exclusion is anti- 
republican and by force of arms abrogate that consti- 
tution and set up another permitting negroes to vote. 
From that decision of the Congress there is no appeal 
to the people of Ohio, but only to the people of Massa- 
chusetts, New York, and Wisconsin, at the election 
of Representatives; and if a majority can not be 
elected to reverse the decision, the people of Ohio must 
submit. Woe be to the day when that doctrine shall 
be established, for from its centralized despotism we 
will appeal to the sword. 

"If this be the alternative of secession I should 
prefer that secession should succeed. I should prefer 
to have the Union dissolved, the Confederate States 
recognized; aye, more, I should prefer that secession 
should go on, if need be, until each state resumes its 
complete independence. I should prefer thirty-four 
republics to one despotism. ... I would rather live a 
free citizen of a republic no larger than my native 
county of Hamilton than be the subject of a more 



316 THE LIFE OF THADDEUS STEVENS 

splendid empire than a Caesar in his proudest triumphs 
ever ruled, or a Napoleon in his loftiest flights ever 
conceived." 1 

This seemed to bear out the charge of Stevens and 
the radical anti-slavery Republicans that the Democrats 
were more opposed to the administration and to what 
Congress was doing for the conduct and success of 
the war than they were to secession and rebellion. 
The Democrats were, at any rate, consistent, — they 
hung together, equally opposed both to the plan of 
Lincoln and to the plan of Congress. 

The basis of this opposition, which is here repro- 
duced at such length, was the old-school, decentralizing, 
states rights conception of the Constitution, and the 
purely theoretical, impractical idea that the Constitu- 
tion applied to all the states alike, to those that had 
repudiated it and had gone into rebellion as well as 
to those loyal to the Union. 

This Democratic view Stevens utterly repudiated 
and despised. It was difficult for him to believe that 
men who were not fools could bring themselves to an- 
nounce and defend it from any other motive than 
sympathy with the Rebellion and from a desire to em- 
barrass the conduct of the war. But neither was 
Stevens satisfied with the Wade-Davis plan. His ob- 
jections were that it partially acknowledged the rebel 
states to have rights under the Constitution, which he 
denied ; the war had abrogated them all. He criticized 
the bill because it " takes for granted that the President 
may partially interfere in the civil administration of 
the Southern States, not as conqueror, but as Presi- 

] rendleton, Globe, May j, 1S64, pp. 2105-2107. 



RECONSTRUCTION DURING WAR 317 

dent of the United States; and because (and this to 
Stevens was the most objectionable feature of all) 
it took away the chance of confiscation of property of 
the rebels." x 

Stevens restated his doctrine of the belligerent 
rights of the nation, which should control the govern- 
ment's action toward the rebel states in the war. 2 He 
noticed the sharp and extensive criticisms which his 
position had called forth. 3 He restated his argument 
from international law, quoting Vattel and other au- 
thorities to justify confiscation by a conqueror in a 
just war, and he would leave the House and the country 
to decide whether this war was just. 

" Yet," he said, " we hear a howl of horror from 
conservative gentlemen at the inhumanity of the propo- 
sition. A band of men sufficiently formidable to be- 
come an acknowledged belligerent, have robbed the 
treasury of the nation, seized the public property, oc- 
cupied our forts and arsenals, severed in twain the 
best and most prosperous nation that ever existed, 
slaughtered two hundred thousand of our citizens, 
caused a debt of two billion dollars, and obstinately 
maintain a cruel warfare. If we are not justified in 
exacting the extreme demands of war then I can hardly 
conceive a case where it would be applicable. . . . No 
one advises the execution of the extreme right. But the 

1 Globe, May 2, 1864, p. 2041. 

2 See pp. 218, 304. 

3 Stevens seemed unable to refrain from indulging in another 
thrust at Francis P. Blair, whom he denounced as " a political 
Ishmael who, having apostatized from all the principles which 
once gave him credit with the people, has no sympathy with any 
body of men, in or out of the House, except his own family 
circle." 



318 THE LIFE OF THADDEUS STEVENS 

right exists and ought to be enforced against the most 
guilty. To allow them to return with their estates un- 
touched, on the theory that they have never gone out 
of the Union, seems to me rank injustice to loyal 
men." x 

Stevens held boldly and consistently to the fact, — 
that the seceded states were out of the Union. If 
they were not and had all the rights of the other 
states and should come here at the next presidential 
election and claim them, — where would such a doc- 
trine lead? "It leads you to subjection to traitors 
and their Northern allies. If they are in the Union, 
where are their Representatives on this floor? Every 
one of the United States is entitled to have members 
here and Senators in the other branch. Where are 
these evidences of existing states ? They are at Rich- 
mond, where the Congress of the Union does not sit." 

Stevens was anxious that Congress in its conduct 
with reference to the rebellious states should set no 
precedent that might subsequently be embarrassing, and 
that legislation on this line should be based on sound 
doctrine. He had opposed the seating of Halm and 
Flanders, the Representatives from Louisiana, in the 
previous Congress. He thought they had been ad- 
mitted to seats " without any law or right," 2 and 
he was now quite satisfied not to have been in any 
way personally responsible for such a precedent.' 5 

1 Globe, May 2, 1864, pp. 2041-2042. 

2 House, January 29, 1864, Globe, p. 412. 

3 Stevens intimated that Harm and Flanders had heen favored 
on account of party service, since they had " gone off and 
stumped New England for two months and then come back 
and had their cases decided." When he was asked by a Ken- 
tuckian whether if they would stump two months more he 



RECONSTRUCTION DURING WAR 319 

He now wished the Davis bill to assert the full power 
of Congress and to deny all rights under the Constitu- 
tion to the rebellious states. He offered a substitute 
for the bill expressing his doctrine. By arrange- O 
ment with Mr. Davis, instead of having a direct vote 
upon his substitute, a portion of it was proposed 
as a preamble to the Davis measure, to be voted on 
separately. This asserted that " the Confederate 
States are a public enemy waging an unjust war, 
whose injustice is so glaring that they have no right 
to claim the mitigation of the extreme rights of 
war which are accorded by modern usage to an en- 
emy who have a right to consider the war a just 
one, and that none of the states which, by a regularly 
recorded majority of its citizens, has joined the so- 
called Southern Confederacy can be considered and 
treated as entitled to be represented in Congress or 
to take any part in the political government of the 
Union." 

This preamble was rejected by a vote of seventy-six 
to fifty-seven. When the bill was put on its passage 
without the Stevens doctrine and after Hubbard and 
Grinnell, of Iowa, announced that they voted for it un- 
der protest, Stevens announced, with due solemnity 
but amid the laughter of members, that he " refused to 
vote under protest." The Wade-Davis Plan passed 
the House May 4, 1864, by a vote of seventy- four to 
fifty-nine. It passed the Senate the last day of the 
session, July 4, 1864, and came to Lincoln for his ap- 

would not be ready to admit them, Stevens replied that he 
thought he might be, " if they would stump Kentucky for 
emancipation." 



320 THE LIFE OF THADDEUS STEVENS 

proval less than one hour before the sine die adjourn- 
ment of Congress. It was prevented from becoming 
a law by the " pocket veto "of the President. On 
July 8, 1864, Mr. Lincoln issued a proclamation to the 
country giving his reasons for not signing the bill. 

He treated the Vv'ade-Davis Bill as an opinion of 
Congress as to the best plan of reconstruction, a plan 
which he now saw fit to lay before the people for their 
consideration. The President stated that he himself 
had propounded a plan and that he was not prepared 
by a formal approval of this bill to be committed in- 
flexibly to any single plan of restoration. He was also 
unprepared, he said, to declare that " the Free State 
constitutions and governments already adopted and 
installed in Louisiana and Arkansas shall be set aside 
and held for nought, thereby repelling and discour- 
aging the loyal citizens as to further effort"; and he 
did not wish to recognize a constitutional competency 
in Congress to abolish slavery in a state. " But," 
said Mr. Lincoln, " I am at the same time sincerely 
hoping and expecting that a constitutional amendment 
abolishing slavery throughout the nation may be 
adopted, nevertheless I am fully satisfied with the 
system of restoration contained in the bill as one very 
proper for the loyal people of any state choosing to 
adopt it, and I am, and at all times shall be, prepared 
to give executive aid to any such people, so soon as 
the military resistance to the United States shall have 
been suppressed in any such state, and the people 
thereof shall have sufficiently returned to their obedi- 
ence to the Constitution " ; then he would be ready to 
appoint Military Governors and instruct them " to pro- 



RECONSTRUCTION DURING WAR *2i 



o* 



ceed according to the bill." Stevens, though he was 
quite dissatisfied with the Wade-Davis Bill, was su- 
premely disgusted with the President's pocket veto and 
his defense of it. " What an infamous proclama- 
tion ! " he wrote privately to a friend. " The Presi- 
dent is determined to have the electoral votes of 
the seceded states, Tennessee, Arkansas, Louisiana, 
Florida and perhaps also South Carolina. The idea 
of pocketing a bill and then issuing a proclamation as 
to how far he will conform to it is matched only by 
signing a bill and then sending in a veto. How little 
of the rights of war and the law of nations our Presi- 
dent knows ! But what are we to do ? Condemn pri- 
vately and approve publicly! The conscription act 
weighs heavily on our people's judge, as I expected." l 
On April 5, 1864, Wade and Davis published in the 
New York Tribune a paper arraigning President Lin- 
coln for his course on the Reconstruction Bill. They 
complained that the President, after defeating the act, 
proposed to appoint Military Governors over the rebel 
states, without law, and without the consent of the 
Senate. This was dictatorial usurpation which he had 
already exercised in Louisiana, and now he had de- 
feated the bill to prevent the limitation of his power. 
A more studied outrage, said this manifesto, on 
the legitimate authority of the people had never been 
perpetrated; the President must understand that their 
support of his administration was that of a cause, not 
of a man; and that he must confine himself to his 
executive duties and leave political organization to 
Congress. 

1 Stevens' Papers, July 10, 1864. 



322 THE LIFE OF THADDEUS STEVENS 

The party division revealed by this controversy was 
not permitted to endanger President Lincoln's reelec- 
tion. The method of reconstruction did not become 
an issue in the campaign, and all sections of the " Na- 
tional Union " party, as the Republicans were called 
in 1864, were united in Mr. Lincoln's support. After 
the election, when, in the congressional session of 
1864-65, Senator Trumbull, chairman of the Senate 
Committee on the Judiciary, reported to the Senate a 
joint resolution recognizing the new government of 
Louisiana as legitimate, Sumner and Wade, and other 
radical Republicans joined the Democrats in opposi- 
tion. Sumner asserted that the passage of the 
resolution would be " a national calamity " and he 
resorted to dilatory tactics to prevent a vote in the 
Senate. Sumner was chiefly concerned because negro 
suffrage was not provided for, though he also insisted 
that reconstruction was a legislative function, to be 
attended to by law, and not an executive function, to 
be carried out by military power. 

Wade again denounced the President's plan with 
vigor. He spoke of the foundation of the government 
as " being swept away by executive usurpation " ; he 
objected to the recognition of a state government that 
had been set up by Major-Generals, nor would he be 
compelled " to receive as associates on this floor these 
mere mockeries, these men of straw, who represent 
nobody.". . ." Talk not to me of your ten per cent, 
principle," he exclaimed. " A more absurd monar- 
chical and anti-American principle was never an- 
nounced on God's earth." * 

1 Globe, February 27, 1865, p. 1128. 



RECONSTRUCTION DURING WAR 323 

The recognition of Louisiana was defeated. Con- 
gress refused to count the electoral votes of Mr. Lin- 
coln's reconstructed states, and the question of recon- 
struction did not again recur during Mr. Lincoln's 
term. The problem had been deferred, and neither 
the policy of Congress nor that of the President had 
triumphed. Lincoln had shown that he was not fixed 
beyond change in favor of any particular scheme of 
reconstruction. No doubt, he would have cooperated 
with Congress and the states in carrying out such a 
plan as Congress had proposed, if a change of circum- 
stances had appeared to make his cooperation desirable. 
But the problems of war were then too pressing, and 
the outcome of the struggle was yet too uncertain, to 
permit the problem of civil reorganization to assume 
first place in the President's attention. That problem 
was to be bequeathed, unfortunately, by the untoward 
act of the assassin, to other executive hands. 



CHAPTER XIII 

JOHNSON AND RECONSTRUCTON 

/ "1~" V HE period of reconstruction includes the years 
■*■ from 1865 to 1876, from the end of the Civil 
War to the election of President Hayes, who by the 
withdrawal of the Federal troops from the Southern 
States left those states to govern themselves in all 
respects like the other states. " The Southern ques- 
tion " then ceased to be a dominant issue in American 
politics. 

The problem of reconstruction was one of the most 
complex and delicate that ever confronted American 
statesmanship. It had to be met amid the disasters 
and passions of war. Unlike union in the formative 
period, reunion had to be brought about immediately 
after a period of internal strife that had aroused the 
bitterest feelings of hate and resentment. The con- 
ditions and estrangements leading to fratricidal war 
had not risen in a year ; they could not be expected to 
die out in a year. The reader of our history in this 
dark period who is inclined to bewail the fact that re- 
organization and reconstruction were not brought 
about more rationally and more dispassionately, should 
bear constantly in mind the momentous factor of the 
popular feeling. 

The task would, also, have been easier and simpler 
under a consolidated form of government. In that 

324 






JOHNSON AND RECONSTRUCTION 325 

case the absolute authority of the reorganizing power, 
triumphant by the issues of war, would have been rec- 
ognized without question, and the controversies over 
constitutional rights and the limits of constitutional 
power would have been avoided. 

The problem clearly involved a number of distinct 
factors. In the first place it required the reorganiza- 
tion of Southern State governments. The old state 
governments that had gone into secession were parts of 
a defunct Confederacy. When the Confederate gov- 
ernment died, these state governments had to be set 
aside. All bodies of opinion in the Union recognized 
that these governments could no longer be allowed to 
exercise authority, and that new state governments, 
loyal to the Union and the Constitution, had to be 
erected in their stead. Moderate and conservative 
leaders in the North, Democrats as well as Republicans, 
who held that the states were indestructible, that they 
had endured without impairment throughout the war 
and that their constitutional rights and political status 
should be respected, still held that the governments of 
these states, having wrongfully attempted to secede, 
were illegal and disloyal. The agents of these govern- 
ments were, in the category of " rebels " and " trai- 
tors," to be saved from a merited punishment only 
through the grace of conciliation and pardon. Conse- 
quently no exception was taken to the policy of Presi- 
dent Johnson in directing the military commanders in 
the South to prevent the old legislatures from assem- 
bling, while the Governors of certain states — Brown, 
of Georgia, Clark, of Mississippi, Magrath, of South 
Carolina, Vance, of North Carolina, and Watts, of Ala- 



326 THE LIFE OF THADDEUS STEVENS 

bama — were arrested and imprisoned. 1 New state 

governments had to be set up on the ruins of the old. 

In the second place, the restoration of the seceded 

states, with their new governments, to their proper 

,A l relations in the Union had to be provided for. The 

Union had been broken for a time by secession and 

2 war and had to be restored. Was it to be the old 

2 > Union or a new one ? Was the maxim that had been 

raised so persistently, not to say pestiferously, by the 

Democratic opposition during the war, " the Union as 

it was, the Constitution as it is," — was this maxim 

to be the guiding principle and to have decisive weight 

in the councils of the restoring authority? 

According to the Federal system which the fathers 
had made and to which the people had become accus- 
tomed, all matters of domestic concern in government 
were left with the people of the states. The national 
government for general affairs, the state government 
for local affairs, and in the allotment of governmental 
activities and powers it is a common observation that 
the state government touches the citizens a hundred 
times where the general government touches him once. 
In all matters of domestic concern, in the e very-day life 
of the people, in their personal relations, in respect to 
their school laws, road laws, suffrage laws, police laws, 
laws of land tenure, contracts, torts, and marriage, — 
in all these matters and many others the Constitution, 
in dividing the functions of government between state 
and nation, had left the state supreme. This right of 
local self-government had existed before the Union 
was formed and to this idea the people had become 
1 Dunning, Reconstruction, pp. 35-36. 



JOHNSON AND RECONSTRUCTION 327 

devotedly attached. This state loyalty had been as 
positive in the North as in the South before the war. 
Had the Civil War changed this old and revered system 
of government? Was there to be a new readjustment 
of powers? Were the states that had taken the Con- 
federate view of the Union and had attempted seces- 
sion in pursuance of their legal rights, as they 
conceived, to be treated like states of the Union? Or 
were they to be treated like conquered provinces to be 
subject in all their domestic concerns to the absolute 
authority of the central government. The Constitu- 
tional theory of the Union and of the effect of the war 
upon the relation of the states was one of the factors, 
and by no means a small one, in the problem of re- 
construction. 

In the third place, in determining the conditions of 
restoration and the reconstruction of the Union, a 
decision had to be made as to what should be the status 
of two classes of people, — those who had borne arms 
against the Union, and the slaves who had been made /j 
free by the war. Here was room for conflict and 
radical differences of opinion. The conflicts and dis- 
cussions that arose from the efforts to meet these ques- 
tions occupied a large part of the struggle in the 
period under consideration. 

Such was the problem of reconstruction. If ever 
the nation needed wisdom, tact, and harmony in the 
councils of government, the spirit of bearance and fore- 
bearance, the dominance of reason and the subjection 
of passion, these qualities were needed then. Yet 
more than at any other period in American history, 
the period of reconstruction is distinguished by bitter- 



328 THE LIFE OF THADDEUS STEVENS 

ness, passion and resentment among the people, and by 
the most violent and unseemly quarrel between the 
legislative and executive branches of the government, a 
conflict that made the matter doubly difficult and that 
seems, in its misfortune and unhappiness, second only 
to the conflict in arms. 

One of the potent factors in that conflict, and there- 
fore one of the influential agencies in determining the 
course of events in reconstruction, was the personal 
character and disposition of Andrew Johnson. 

Abraham Lincoln died on the morning of April 15, 
1865. Three hours later Andrew Johnson, of Ten- 
nessee, took the oath of office of President of the 
United States. Johnson was born in Raleigh, North 
Carolina, December 29, 1808. His parents were uned- 
ucated and belonged to the class in the South known as 
" poor whites." The father died when Andrew was 
a mere child, and when he reached the age of ten he was 
apprenticed to a tailor. He had no early education, 
and it was while working at his trade that he learned 
to read, at the age of fifteen. At eighteen as a jour- 
neyman tailor, he moved with his mother to Greenville, 
Tennessee, where he had the good fortune to meet 
and marry Elizabeth McCardle, a woman of consider- 
able education and refinement. His wife taught him 
to write and during the day she read to him while he 
was at work at his tailor's bench. Young Johnson 
showed a love for oratory and he read eagerly the 
speeches of Pitt and Fox and other English classics. 
He was a natural talker and this talent led him into 
politics. At twenty he became an alderman of Green- 
ville, was later chosen Mayor and then was elected 







FHOM THE COLLECTION OF ROBERT COSTER 

Axdrew Johnson, 1808-1875. 

President of tit* United States, 1865 (869. 



JOHNSON AND RECONSTRUCTION 329 

to the Legislature. In 1843 he was elected to the 
lower house of Congress, where he served for five 
terms, till 1853. He was then elected Governor of 
Tennessee, and in 1857 he was sent to the United 
States Senate. He was looked upon as a " Plebeian 
Democrat," and was called the " Mechanic Governor," 
as it was unusual in the South for such artisans to be 
elected to such high office. 

Johnson was known in the Senate as a strict con- 
struction states rights Democrat, though socially it was 
recognized that he was not in the same class with the 
aristocratic Southern Senators. He shared with the 
common people of his section, the non-slaveholding 
majority, certain inherited prejudices against the mas- 
ter class. He owed nothing to them for his advance- 
ment and as a Southerner he looked upon the war, 
which he thought the slaveholders had brought upon 
the country, as " a rich man's war but a poor man's 
fight." In the campaign of i860 he supported Breck- 
inridge, the Southern Democrat, for the presidency. 
But he stoutly opposed secession in Tennessee and 
after the state had passed an ordinance of secession he 
retained his place in the Senate. He showed his un- 
bending devotion to the Union in East Tennessee un- 
der times and circumstances when the fighting qualities 
were required and in boldness of speech and action 
that left it impossible to doubt the courage and integ- 
rity of his convictions. Evidently he was not in the 
habit of moving in the line of least resistance. In 
March, 1862, he was appointed Military Governor of 
Tennessee and he sought to cooperate with Lincoln 
in the restoration of his state to the Union. He was 



330 THE LIFE OF THADDEUS STEVENS 

in this office when he was nominated for the vice- 
presidency with Lincoln in 1864. It was his stanch 
Unionism and his work as Military Governor that led 
to his nomination. The Republican party in that year 
called itself the National Union Party, and it sought 
to call to its support all who would support the war 
for the Union and the vindication of the national 
authority, and in order to give itself a more national 
and less sectional appearance it refused Vice-President 
Hamlin a renomination and took up Andrew Johnson 
instead, — a mistake that caused the party, if not the 
country, bitter regret in the years immediately follow- 
ing. 1 

It seems to be the consensus of opinion among the 
critics of Johnson that he lacked adaptation to the 
delicate task before him. He was stubborn, opinion- 
ated, a man of prejudice, was lacking in tact and was 
not sufficiently in touch with the different sections of 
the country. He did not have Lincoln's cautious 
method of feeling the public pulse before launching 
into a new policy. He lacked the faculty of harmon- 
izing his advisers or of profiting by their opinions. 
Benjamin R. Curtis, who defended him in the im- 
peachment trial, said : " Johnson is a man of few 
ideas, but they are right and true, and he could suffer 
death sooner than yield up or violate one of them. He 
is honest, right-minded, and narrow-minded ; he has no 
tact and even lacks discretion and forecast." 

1 Colonel A. K. McClure relates that Stevens said to him 
after McClure had voted in the Convention of 1864 for the 
nomination of Johnson : " Can't you find a candidate for Vice- 
President in the United States without going' down to one of 
those damned rebel provinces to pick one up?" Lincoln and 
Men of War Times. 



JOHNSON AND RECONSTRUCTION 331 

Johnson took up the work of reconstruction where 
Lincoln laid it down. Their plans were identical. On 
May 9, 1865, the Pierpont government in Virginia, the 
shadow of a government, was recognized as the legiti- 
mate government of the state, and Lincoln's reorgan- 
ized governments in Louisiana, Arkansas and 
Tennessee were assumed to be legitimate and their 
authority was recognized. Johnson began the work 
of reconstruction for the other seven states on May 
29, 1865. On that day he issued a proclamation of 
pardon and amnesty for all who had taken part in 
the Rebellion, who were ready to take an oath to sup- 
port and defend the Constitution. The offer did not 
apply to those who had already taken advantage of 
Mr. Lincoln's previous offers. There were certain 
excepted classes, — those who had held civil or military 
office under the Confederacy, or military office above 
the rank of Colonel ; those who had left Congress or 
judicial stations of the United States to aid the Rebel- 
lion; those who had treated prisoners of the United 
States otherwise than as prisoners of war; those who 
had been engaged in destroying the commerce of the 
United States upon the high seas ; those who had passed 
from the United States through the Confederate lines 
for the purpose of aiding the Rebellion ; and those who 
had been under criminal or civil arrest or who had 
failed to keep the oath previously taken. 

Johnson excepted six more classes than Lincoln, the 
most significant of the new classes being that of persons 
worth twenty thousand dollars or more, an exception 
which, as had been supposed, was prompted by John- 
son's prejudices against the richer classes in the South. 



332 THE LIFE OF THADDEUS STEVENS 

These exceptions would have excluded almost all the 
men qualified by experience and training for leadership, 
but there were liberal provisions for restoration and 
escape, since pardon and clemency would come, as a 
matter of course, to the leaders who made personal ap- 
plication to the President. The great body of the peo- 
ple were amnestied as a whole. 

On the same day (May 29th), President Johnson is- 
sued a second proclamation appointing a Provisional 
Governor of North Carolina and authorizing him to 
cause the election of delegates to a state convention 
for the reconstruction of the state and its restoration 
to the Union. The voters for delegates to the state 
convention should be those who were qualified to vote 
by the laws of North Carolina just prior to her seces- 
sion in May, 1861, after taking the prescribed oath. 
The oath required as a condition of pardon and partici- 
pation, an unqualified pledge to support all laws and 
decrees touching slavery. Any subordinate officer 
competent to administer oaths might administer the 
oath of loyalty, issuing a certificate of restored citizen- 
ship. County and municipal officers were directed to 
resume their functions, under the oath, and the certify- 
ing officer was almost brought to the door of every 
Southern household. " The mercy and grace of the 
government fell upon the great mass of those .who 
had engaged in rebellion as gently and as plenteously 
as the rain from heaven upon the place beneath the foot 
of the offenders." 1 The excepted classes could take 
no part in reorganizing the state. 

It appears that Johnson's Cabinet was evenly divided 

1 Blaine, II, p. 76. 



JOHNSON AND RECONSTRUCTION 2,32, 

upon a proposal to include the negroes in the new elec- 
torate, permitting " all loyal citizens " to participate in 
the government under provisions of law imposed on the 
state by Federal authority. Chief Justice Chase by 
letters from the South strongly urged this policy. 
Johnson was not friendly to negro suffrage but he 
was willing to see such colored men admitted as voters 
who were able to read the Constitution and write their 
names or who paid taxes on as much as two hundred 
and fifty dollars' worth of property. But this conces- 
sion was made, not because Johnson believed in the 
political capacity of the negro or that he should be ad- 
mitted to the rights of manhood, but as a means of 
" disarming the adversary " and of preventing the rad- 
icals " who are wild upon negro franchise " from 
" keeping the Southern States from renewing their re- 
lations to the Union." * While Johnson was willing to 
yield something upon the point of qualified negro suf- 
frage allowed by the consent of the state, he was very 
positive in his position that the state should be left to 
decide. To prescribe suffrage rules, was not, in his 
view, within the scope of Federal power. " That was a 
power," as Johnson said, " which the people of the sev- 
eral states have rightfully exercised from the origin of 
the government to the present time." Congress, dur- 
ing the war, in the Wade-Davis Bill, had wrongfully 
presumed to fix the suffrage requirements, but even 
then it had proposed to restrict the suffrage to the 
whites. All but six of the Northern States denied the 
negroes the right to vote and one of these (New York) 

1 Johnson to Governor Sharkey, Garner's Reconstruction in 
Mississippi, pp. 84-85- 



334 THE LIFE OF THADDEUS STEVENS 

required of the black a property qualification not re- 
quired of the white, and Johnson astutely said that he 
wanted to let all the states alike be independent in this 
matter. 1 

Under the North Carolina proclamation the laws of 
the United States were to be put into operation within 
that state, the judges were to open the courts and the 
military officers were to render all necessary military 
aid. The convention, or the Legislature, was to pre- 
scribe the qualifications of voters and the eligibility 
of persons to hold office under the state. The state 
was recognized as of old and was looked upon as 
simply amending its constitution in ways essential to 
meet the conditions of restoration. This involved " ac- 
cepting the results of the war." President Johnson 
let it be known that he would hold these results to be 
secured essentially if the state consented to the follow- 
ing fundamental conditions : 

i. The repeal of the Ordinance of Secession, or de- 
claring it null and void. 

2. The abolition of slavery, or the recognition of its 
abolition. 

3. Repudiation of the debts incurred by the states 
in aid of the Rebellion. 

On the basis of these conditions Johnson's plan of 
reconstruction proceeded. Proclamations similar to 
that for North Carolina were issued for the other 
states, appointing Provisional Governors and restoring 
local civil laws and authorities. During the summer 
and fall of 1865 elections were held in other states on 
the basis of the old suffrage; their constitutional con- 
1 Rhodes, V, p. 524. 



JOHNSON AND RECONSTRUCTION 335 

ventions met, their state constitutions or laws were 
amended in the particulars required, and in October 
and November their people proceeded to elect members 
of Congress, United States Senators, Governors and 
State Legislators. When their legislatures met they 
were given to understand through the Provisional 
Governors that they were expected to ratify the thir- 
teenth amendment. This they all did except Missis- 
sippi. 1 During this period the President had declared 
the cessation of armed resistance, the restoration of in- 
tercourse throughout the country, the raising of the 
blockade and putting all branches of the civil govern- 
ment into operation. 2 

Thus by the close of 1865, the states were all re- 
organized, 3 the Provisional Governors appointed by the 
President were relieved of their duties, and the new 
governments were recognized as being in the full ex- 
ercise of their functions. In brief, the United States 
government had, through executive action alone, reas- 
serted its civil power and reassumed its civil functions 
and duties within the seceded states; legal and legiti- 
mate state governments were in operation; and every 
legal connection under the Constitution between the 
state and the national government had been fully re- 
stored. All that Congress was to do was to judge of 
the qualifications and elections of the members from 

1 See Garner, p. 120. 

2 When Texas, somewhat belated, had completed her reorgan- 
ization on the terms imposed (April, 1866), Johnson in disregard 
of congressional rebuke and dissension, August 20, 1866, pro- 
claimed the complete restoration of peace, order and authority 
throughout the United States. With this, he persistently held, 
the work of reconstruction was completed. 

3 Except Texas. 



336 THE LIFE OF THADDEUS STEVENS 

the South who might come to Washington bearing the 
credentials of the Johnson governments. "The re- 
construction conventions," says Mr. Blaine, " were 
little else than consulting bodies of Confederate officers 
under the rank of Brigadier General, actually sitting 
throughout their deliberations in the uniform of the 
rebel service and apparently dictating to the govern- 
ment of the Union the grounds on which they would 
consent to resume representation in the national Con- 
gress." Johnson's Provisional Governors were mostly 
made up of Southern Whigs who had opposed seces- 
sion, but in the reorganizing conventions there were 
many active secessionists and as time passed by under 
the operation of amnesty and pardon this secession ele- 
ment came to the front in political activity and control, 
and the new state governments that were set up came 
under the control of men who had been active leaders 
in the Confederate cause. The thing that loomed large 
in the view of the people of the North was that the 
" unrepentant rebels " were again in control of their 
states and that such men were to be sent to Congress 
to help make laws for the nation. The new Governor 
of South Carolina had been a Confederate Senator, 
that of Mississippi, a Brigadier General in the Con- 
federate army; a Confederate Major-General had been 
elected to Congress from Alabama, 1 and no less a 
person than Alexander H. Stephens, who, when Con- 
gress adjourned March 3, 1865, was acting as Vice- 
President of the Southern Confederacy, had the bold- 
ness with the iron-clad oath " staring him in the face, 
to lay his credentials on the table of the Senate as a 
1 Dunning, Reconstruction, p. 44. 



JOHNSON AND RECONSTRUCTION 337 

Senator-elect from Georgia." The iron-clad oath 
imposed by act of Congress, of July 2, 1862, required 
of all who wished to qualify for any office of profit 
or honor under the United States government, to 
swear that he had never voluntarily borne arms against 
the United States, and that he had given no aid nor 
encouragement to any one engaged in armed hostility. 
The men who reorganized the Johnson governments in 
the South denounced this law as unconstitutional and 
in defiance of it the people elected men as Senators 
and Representatives in Congress who were, with few 
exceptions, active participants in the Rebellion. 1 " In 
his astounding effrontery," says Mr. Blaine, " Mr. 
Stephens even went so far as to insist on interpreting 
to those loyal men who had been conducting the United 
States government through all its perils, the Con- 
stitution under which they had been acting and to point 
out how they were depriving him of his rights by 
demanding an oath of loyalty and good faith as the 
condition on which he should be entitled to take part 
in legislation for the restored Union, as if every liv- 
ing man had forgotten that for four years he had been 
exerting his utmost effort to destroy the Constitution 
under which he claimed the full rights of a citizen." 2 

If Johnson thought that Congress would accept 
quietly and without protest Southern State govern- 
ments established in such conditions, it shows how 
sadly he misunderstood the f eMper and purpose of 
the North. The men who had borne the heat and 
burden of the war for the Union for four long years 
were not inclined to see the men against whom they 

1 Blaine, II, pp. 87-88. - Twenty Years, II, pp. 88-89. 



338 THE LIFE OF THADDEUS STEVENS 

had fought immediately restored to places of power 
and influence in state and nation. Those who had 
been so long and so bitterly hostile to the Union had 
given no evidence of such change of spirit as entitled 
them to be replaced in power. If the President had 
organized state governments under the control of men 
who could have given reasonable guarantee to the 
North that they were loyal to the Union ; and if these 
governments had shown a disposition to protect loyal 
citizens and to secure freedom and a " fair deal " to 
all the inhabitants of those states, Congress doubtless 
would have overlooked the manner of their organiza- 
tion and have restored them to their proper relations 
to the Union. Congress and the country were as 
anxious as the President that this be done on fair and 
honorable terms. But they also felt under a sacred 
obligation to safeguard the black man in his " new 
birth of freedom," and they were not willing that " the 
rebellious states should be ruled over by rebels and 
that Union men be persecuted for their loyalty." x 

With the opening of the Thirty-ninth Congress John- 
son was to be given an opportunity to learn the strength 
of the Northern purpose in respect to reconstruction, — 
a purpose that had no expectation of being left out of 
the account. This Northern opinion, as reflected in 
Congress, Johnson seemed determined to override or 
ignore. How this opinion and Johnson's obstinacy 
came into collision the first session of the new Con- 
gress brings into view. 

1 Trumbull, 1867, Harper's Monthly, Vol. 34, p. 399. 



CHAPTER XIV 

THE BREACH WITH JOHNSON 

' I V HE President's plan of reconstruction was com- 
•*• pleted. Peace was declared to be restored, but 
there was to be no peace. The struggle in arms, it is 
true, had ended; but the country was on the eve of 
a political conflict unsurpassed in its history. 

When the Thirty-ninth Congress met for its first 
session in December, 1865, the Clerk of the preceding 
House, whose business it was to make up the pre- 
liminary roll of members entitled to take part in the 
election of the Speaker and the organization of the 
House, omitted the names of those coming up with 
certificates of election from Johnson's reconstructed 
states. In this the Clerk was acting in obedience to 
the Republican party caucus which had been largely 
dominated by Stevens. The Clerk refused to listen to 
protests from the Tennessee members or to entertain 
motions from Democrats directing him to put on the 
roll the members-elect from Johnson's own state. The 
Constitution requires the President to be an inhabitant 
of a state. Brooks, a Democrat from New York, 
demanded to know, if Tennessee were not a loyal state 
and the people of Tennessee were aliens and foreigners 
to the Union, by what right the President usurped 
his place in the White House. If members-elect from 
Tennessee were not entitled to their seats because 

339 



340 THE LIFE OF THADDEUS STEVENS 

their state was not in the Union, how was Johnson 
entitled to his ? Was he to be looked upon as a usurp- 
ing inhabitant of a territory? Brooks demanded a 
decision of this question before the Speaker was elected. 
In the preceding Congress members from Louisiana 
had been admitted in time of war; why should Ten- 
nessee now be refused in time of peace? 

But the Republicans were largely in the majority; 
a program had been arranged, and under the leader- 
ship of Stevens, with this majority behind him, all at- 
tempts at debate or delay were overruled, and the 
Southern members were left off the roll. 1 

Stevens had in his pocket the resolution which was 
to open the great contest with the President, — a con- 
test most memorable in our congressional annals. He 
was taunted by Brooks, the Democratic leader, with 
the inquiry as to when, acting for his party caucus, 
he intended to press his resolution. " I have no ob- 
jection to answering the gentleman," retorted Stev- 
ens ; " I propose to press it at the proper time." Im- 
mediately after the election of the officers of the House, 
but before the reading of the annual message of the 
President, Stevens offered his resolution which pro- 
vided for a joint committee on reconstruction to 
consist of nine Representatives and six Senators who 
should inquire into the condition of the Southern States 
and " report whether they or any of them are entitled 
to be represented in either house of Congress, and 
until such report shall have been made and finally 

1 Schuyler Colfax, of Indiana, was elected Speaker by a vote 
of 139 to 36, the minority vote being cast for James Brooks, of 
New York. 



THE BREACH WITH JOHNSON 341 

acted upon by Congress no member shall be received 
into either house from any of the so-called Confeder- 
ate States." For the passage of this resolution Stev- 
ens moved the suspension of the rules and the previous 
question. This cut off debate, and the resolution car- 
ried by one hundred and thirty-three ayes to thirty-six 
noes. The members from Johnson's reconstructed 
states were not to be allowed the usual privilege of the 
floor while a decision was pending. 

This summary action gave indication of the temper 
of Congress, showing that it was in no mood to ac- 
cept Johnson's plan of reconstruction. It served no- 
tice that a contest was at hand, and that, at any rate, 
Stevens and his radical colleagues were determined 
to overthrow if possible what Johnson had set up. 
" Before that day," says Mr. McCall, " Stevens had 
been the leader of the House of Representatives. 
Henceforth he was to be its dictator and the leader 
of his party throughout the country." 1 

Stevens was made chairman of the House Com- 
mittee on Reconstruction and associated with him were 
such men as Bingham, Washburn, Boutwell, Conkling, 
and Morrill. Senator Fessenden, of Maine, was made 
chairman of the Senate Committee. On the second 
day of the session Stevens introduced three resolu- 
tions setting forth the terms of reconstruction that he 
wished to have imposed, to be incorporated by amend- 
ment into the fundamental law of the land. These res- 
olutions and the notable speech of Stevens of De- 
cember 18, 1865, in which he opened the great debate 
on reconstruction, may be said to lay down the es- 

1 Life of Stevens, p. 259. 



342 THE LIFE OF THADDEUS STEVENS 

sential reasons why Congress rejected the reconstruc- 
tion policy of President Johnson and began to construct 
a policy of its own. 

In the first place, Congress thought it was not the 
exclusive business of the President to carry on recon- 
struction. The problem of restoring the broken union 
was fundamental. It went to the roots of political 
power and the institutions of government. It far 
transcended the routine and technical question of 
whether men claiming to have been elected to Congress 
were of proper age and had been elected without fraud. 
It involved the problem of rebuilding the Union, the 
readmission of states that had foresworn their alle- 
giance to the Constitution, and the reestablishment of 
local government in those states on the principles ac- 
ceptable to the nation. This vast political problem of 
reconstruction, as we have seen, not only involved the 
destruction of the Confederate State governments of 
the South and the setting up of new governments in 
their stead and the restoration of these new govern- 
ments in their proper place in the Union, all of which 
Johnson had undertaken to accomplish without the 
least shadow of constitutional authority, but also the 
legal and constitutional status of two important ele- 
ments of the population had to be determined, — the 
negroes who had been set free by the war and the 
Confederate leaders who had for four years borne 
arms against the Federal government. It was absurd 
to suppose that Congress was to be barred from hav- 
ing any voice in the determination of these great ques- 
tions of state. They involved powers and policies 
too large for the President alone. Was it short of 






THE BREACH WITH JOHNSON 343 

"preposterous," as Stevens said, for Johnson to as- 
sume such powers to himself? It belonged to the 
United States in Congress assembled to determine 
what should be the constitutional and civil results of 
the war and how these were to be made permanent 
and secure. There can be no doubt of the soundness 
of the political theory that Stevens now so forcibly 
laid down as the basis of congressional action. 1 

The controlling provision of the Constitution in re- 
storing the broken Union was where Stevens found it, 
in the power to admit new states. On this he based 
his policy of reconstruction. It has been called his 
" conquered province theory." It was a practical 
policy rather than a theory, and it was the same as 
that on which he sought to conduct the war for the 
Union. It was that the war had severed the original 
compact and broken all ties that had bound the states 
together. The power of Congress was absolute in the 
conquered states, and to their rights and immunities 
the Constitution had ceased to apply. They must now 
come in as new states or remain as conquered prov- 
inces, and Congress is the only power that can de- 
termine the conditions of readmission. " But 
suppose," says Stevens, " as some dreaming theorists 
imagine that these states have never been out of the 
Union, but have only destroyed their state govern- 
ments so as to be incapable of political action," then 
the United States shall guarantee a republican form 
of government. The United States is not the Presi- 

1 Professor J. W. Burgess, of Columbia University, a leading 
American authority in political science and constitutional law, 
expresses very positive approval of Stevens' view. "Recon- 
struction and the Constitution/ p. 43. 



344 THE LIFE OF THADDEUS STEVENS 

dent " but the sovereign power of the people," exer- 
cised through their representatives in Congress. This 
is the power that is to establish a republican form of 
government in lapsed or outlawed states. 

" It is worse than ridiculous to hear men of respect- 
able standing attempting to nullify the law of na- 
tions and declare that because the Constitution forbids 
it, the states could not go out of the Union in fact. 
The theory that the rebel states, for four years a sep- 
arate power and without representation in Congress, 
were all the time here in the Union, is a good deal 
less ingenious and respectable than the metaphysics of 
Berkeley which proved that neither the world nor 
any human being was in existence. If this theory 
were simply ridiculous it could be forgiven, but its 
effect is deeply injurious to the nation. I can not doubt 
that the late Confederate States are out of the Union 
to all intents and purposes for which the conqueror 
may wish to consider them. After the palpable facts 
of war, to deny that we have a right to treat them 
as a conquered belligerent, severed from the Union in 
fact, is not argument but mockery." If the states 
were to be regarded as dead within the Union, from 
their own act of suicide, the only power that could 
reanimate them and make them capable of political 
action was in Congress. A law of Congress is neces- 
sary to revive a dead state, and until then no member 
can be admitted lawfully to either house. The provi- 
sion that each house shall be the judge of the elections 
and qualifications of its own members has not the most 
distant bearing on this question. Congress must first 



THE BREACH WITH JOHNSON 345 

create states and declare when they are entitled to be 
represented. 

Standing on this principle of congressional power in 
the solution of this problem, Stevens insisted upon two 
matters as of vital importance in the beginning of 
reconstruction. One was that it should be decided 
for all time what power was competent to " revive, 
recreate, and reinstate these provinces into the family 
of states " ; the other was that none of the South- 
ern States should be counted in adopting the amend- 
ments held to be necessary for the reconstructed Union. 
Congress should assert its sovereign authority. Stev- 
ens very much disliked the course Secretary Seward 
had assumed in counting the Southern States in mak- 
ing up the three- fourths necessary for the adoption of 
the thirteenth amendment. Such a position " was in- 
tended to delude the people and to accustom Congress 
to hear repeated the names of these extinct states as if 
they were alive." To Stevens' mind these states had 
" no more existence than the revolted cities of Latium," 
and he proposed to take no account of " the aggrega- 
tion of whitewashed rebels who, without any legal 
authority, have assembled in the capitols of the late 
rebel states and simulated legislative bodies. . . . How 
shameful that men of influence should mislead and 
miseducate the public mind ! " 

Having established the power of Congress in the 
case, Stevens sought next to lay down the conditions 
for the readmission of the conquered states. These 
conditions should be fixed beyond recall by such con- 
stitutional amendments as would make the Constitu- 



346 THE LIFE OF THADDEUS STEVENS 

lion what its frame rs intended it to be and would 
" render republican government forever firm and 
stable." 

One of his proposed amendments indicated the 
second essential reason why Congress and the country 
were not willing to accept Johnson's plan, namely, the 
necessity for the protection of the freedman. It pro- 
vided that " all national and state laws shall be equally 
applicable to every citizen and no discrimination shall 
be made on account of race or color." Here is the 
germ of an important part of the fourteenth amend- 
ment, — the guarantee of civil rights to the negro. 
Stevens did not at this time propose to grant the right 
of suffrage to the freedmen, though he did not conceal 
his opinion in favor of that measure. He thought it 
would be brought about by the readjustment of rep- 
resentation. However, he spoke boldly for the de- 
fense of the freedmen under uniform laws and for their 
provision till they could take care of themselves. 
" The infernal laws of slavery," he said, " have pre- 
vented them from acquiring an education, understand- 
ing the commonest laws of contract, or of managing 
ordinary business of life. We must not leave them 
to the legislation of their late masters, but we must 
provide for them protective laws. . . . If we fail in 
this great duty now when we have the power we shall 
deserve and receive the execration of history and of 
all future ages." 

Northern belief in the necessity of protection for 
the negro was one of the most potent influences lead- 
ing to the rejection and defeat of Johnson's plan. The 
electorate that he had established precluded negro 



THE BREACH WITH JOHNSON 347 

suffrage, but far more important than that was the 
treatment accorded the freedmen by the Legislatures 
of Johnson's newly erected states. 

The unfair discriminations visited upon the blacks 
by the vagrancy laws passed in the South in 1865 are 
a matter of common knowledge, and they need not be 
recounted here. Their unequal character seemed to 
General Sickles to call for the intervention of the 
military arm for the sake of civil liberty, and one of 
his military orders decreed that the vagrancy laws ap- 
plicable to free white persons should be the only ones 
recognized as applicable to freedmen. 1 To the North- 
ern mind it was made to appear that the design of 
these laws was the practical reenslavement of the 
blacks. " Vagrants," without visible means of sup- 
port were to be put to forced labor, and the helpless 
blacks, for no other crime than that of poverty, might 
be " hired out " to masters, old or new, who would 
pay the public for their time and labor. These " black 
codes " aroused anger and indignation in the North and 
they were looked upon as having been enacted from a 
spirit of irritation and defiance because of the aboli- 
tion of slavery. Stevens was convinced that the spirit 
•of slavery still lived, and he had no doubt that if the 
freedom of their race was to be preserved the negroes 
should not be entrusted to the tender mercies of their 
former masters with political power in their hands. 
Stevens had in view, but held in abeyance, his policy 
on this phase of reconstruction. But he sought here, 
in the beginning, to emphasize the principle that the 
protection of civil rights and civil equality was a na- 

1 Cong. Globe, March 10, 1865. 



348 THE LIFE OF THADDEUS STEVENS 

tional function ; that the Constitution should require the 
states to treat their own inhabitants with equality in 
regard to their civil rights, and that the only way 
these civil rights could be secured was by national law. 
He would place that guarantee where it could never 
be undermined nor overthrown. 

A third reason why Congress would not accept John- 
son's plan was that it left the Southern States and their 
elections entirely within the control of the Confeder- 
ates. His policy had led the ex-Confederates, so 
lately in arms for the purpose of destroying the Union, 
to show a disposition to claim rights rather than 
to submit to conditions. Their conventions seemed 
little more than consulting bodies of Confederate of- 
ficers, " actually sitting throughout their deliberations 
in the uniform of the rebel service apparently dic- 
tating to the government of the Union the grounds on 
which they would consent to resume representation 
in the national Congress." " Hardly is the war 
closed," said the committee on reconstruction, " be- 
fore the people of the insurrectionary states come 
forward and haughtily claim as a right, the privilege 
of participating at once in that government which they 
have for four years been fighting to overthrow. Al- 
lowed and encouraged by the Executive to organize 
state governments, they at once placed in power lead- 
ing rebels, unrepentant and unpardoned, excluding with 
contempt those who had manifested an attachment to 
the Union, and preferring in many instances those who 
had rendered themselves peculiarly obnoxious." 

In Stevens' opinion and according to his policy, the 
first duty of Congress was to pass a law defining the 



THE BREACH WITH JOHNSON 349 

condition of these "defunct states" and providing 
civil government for them. He recognized that mili- 
tary law was despotic and ought not to exist any longer 
than is necessary. A territorial government was the 
proper arrangement, and he saw no symptoms that they 
would be ready to participate in constitutional govern- 
ment for some years to come. In this territorial state 
they " can learn the principles of freedom and eat 
the fruit of foul rebellion." Congress could then fix 
the qualifications for voters and the rebels might be 
given an opportunity " to practise justice to all men and 
make and obey equal laws." As to their rights of 
life and property and the retributive justice that was 
due them he had opinions that he proposed to an- 
nounce " at the proper time." 

There were other reasons that had great weight in 
Stevens' mind, and in those of the other radical lead- 
ers, why Congress should overturn the policy of John- 
son. The national debt should be guaranteed, as, also, 
the sacred pension obligations to soldiers and sailors 
and to their widows and orphans, against any possible 
hostile combination of " Southern rebels " and " North- 
ern Copperheads." The payment of the Confederate 
debt contracted by a state for Confederate purposes 
should be prevented by the fundamental law of the 
land, before these states should be readmitted and be 
given the rights of local self-government. The na- 
tion should not permit men to be rewarded or repaid 
for an effort upon its life. Stevens wished to outlaw 
these debts that had been contracted for lawless and 
wicked purposes, and he believed that if the states were 
admitted and left to do as they pleased, these debts 



350 THE LIFE OF THADDEUS STEVENS 

would be taken up and paid. Money lenders who 
staked their capital on the effort to disrupt the Union 
and destroy the government should be taught the les- 
son they deserved. 

Stevens was in entire harmony with the public opin- 
ion of the North in regarding the Rebellion as a gi- 
gantic crime and he held that its leaders, instead of 
being pardoned and exonerated and elected to office 
and admitted again into the seats of honor and power, 
should be visited with condign punishment. He 
would provide homesteads and the suffrage for the 
negroes for their protection, and as a means to this 
end and as a punitive measure calculated as a fair 
warning to future ages, he advocated the confiscation 
of the estates of Southern leaders and their exclusion 
from political power. No one to-day would approve 
Stevens' drastic plan of confiscation as a public policy, 
and wherein he manifested the spirit of vindictiveness 
and revenge in public speech and policy he is, as a 
matter of course, to be disapproved distinctly and con- 
demned. But the feeling that there should be some 
punishment meted out for the Rebellion w r as almost 
universal in the North. On that matter Stevens was 
not by any means exceptional. The hatred engen- 
dered by the war was not more intense in Stevens than 
in thousands of others in the North. 

The final and one of the most important reasons 
for the break with Johnson came from the desire of 
Stevens and the radical leaders in Congress to read- 
just the distribution of political power among the 
states. This came partly from a desire to promote 
political equity and partly to secure party ascendency. 



THE BREACH WITH JOHNSON 351 

It was to be secured by one of Stevens' proposed 
amendments apportioning representation among the 
states, not according to population but in proportion 
to legal voters. Stevens was most anxious to see to 
it that the basis of representation for the allotment of 
political power should be changed. He believed that 
the Slave States had enjoyed an unfair share of political 
power from the foundation of the government and that 
Johnson's reconstruction would aggravate the evil. 
The opportunity for remedy that now presented itself 
should not go unimproved. It was seen that the adop- 
tion of the thirteenth amendment, forever abolishing 
slavery, would give to the Southern States an increased 
representation in Congress. In this fact, so unpalata- 
ble to the Northern Republicans, Stevens found a great 
source of support for his cause. The representation 
for non-voting people of color in the South was then 
thirty-seven. The South had seventy representatives 
in Congress, having twenty- four for three-fifths of 
their slaves. Add the other two-fifths of the blacks 
now free, and they would have thirteen more, making 
eighty-three. If colored people were not to be allowed 
to vote, Stevens wished not only not to add these 
thirteen to the South's representation, but to take away 
the twenty- four which had been allotted to them on ac- 
count of three-fifths of the slaves. This would reduce 
their representation to forty-six, — a material reduction 
in political power. If the basis remained unchanged 
the eighty-three Southern members, with the Demo- 
crats that will in the best of times be elected from the 
North, will always give them a majority in Congress 
and in the Electoral College. " At the first election," 



352 THE LIFE OF THADDEUS STEVENS 

said Stevens, " they will take possession of the White 
House and the halls of Congress. I need not depict the 
ruin that would follow. Assumption of the rebel debt ; 
repudiation of the Federal debt, oppression of the freed- 
men, reamendment of their state constitutions, and the 
reestablishment of slavery would be the inevitable re- 
sult. They would scorn and disregard their present 
constitutions forced upon them by martial law while 
in duress, — which would be but natural action on their 
part." 

The party motive prompting this proposal was 
frankly avowed by Stevens. He resorted to no subter- 
fuges and made no concealments. The support of 
Johnson's plan by the Northern " Copperhead De- 
mocracy " in combination with Southern leaders was 
condemnation enough for Stevens. He believed John- 
son had in view a party scheme for uniting these ele- 
ments, together with the conservative elements of the 
Republican party, to the undoing of the country and 
the sacrifice of the results of the war. The men in 
the North who had stood most stoutly against slavery 
and for the Union were to be thrust from power. It 
was up to the radical leaders to circumvent the scheme. 
Stevens boldly declared his opinion that the ascen- 
dency of the Union Republican party was essential 
to make secure the great results of the war and that 
if these results were not made safe by amendments 
before the states were restored they never could be. 
His amendment did not impose negro suffrage on the 
Southern States, but if these states refused to admit 
the blacks to suffrage, their representation would be 
so reduced as to render them powerless for evil ; while 



THE BREACH WITH JOHNSON 353 

if they granted the suffrage to the negroes there would 
always be Union white men enough aided by the 
blacks to divide the representation and continue Re- 
publican ascendency. 

Stevens closed his appeal for a more radical policy 
with a bold advocacy of the equality of all men before 
the law. He held firmly to the great democratic prin- 
ciple of the Declaration of Independence upon which 
our fathers created a revolution and build the republic. 
He never quailed nor failed in his defense of the great 
enduring principles of democracy. He urged that the 
republic should be made to stand on the principles of 
the fathers, otherwise it could have " no honest foun- 
dation and the Father of all men will still shake it to 
its center. If we have not yet been sufficiently 
scourged for our national sin to teach us to do justice 
to all God's creatures, without distinction of race or 
color, we must expect the still more heavy vengeance 
of an offended Father. 

" This is not a ' white man's government.' To say 
so is political blasphemy, for it violates the funda- 
mental principles of our gospel of liberty. This is 
man's government, the government of all men alike. 
Equal rights to all the privileges of the government 
is innate in every mortal being, no matter what the 
shape or color of the tabernacle which it inhabits. . . . 
Sir, this doctrine of a white man's government is as 
astrocious as the infamous sentiment that damned the 
late chief justice to everlasting fame and I fear to 
everlasting fire." * 

1 Globe, December 18, 1865. 
_ That Stevens was supported in his course by the public sen- 
timent of his party and by many who would now be re- 



354 THE LIFE OF THADDEUS STEVENS 

This speech went to the country as an attack on the 
policy of the administration. Mr. Henry J. Ray- 
mond, of New York, an administration Republican, 
replied to it urging a liberal policy toward the South, 

garded as moderate and conservative men, is attested by the 
numerous letters that poured in upon him in approval of this 
speech. The lack of space forbids the use of these indorse- 
ments, but a few may be cited as typical of many. 

The following is from Judge Alphonso Taft, father of Presi- 
dent Taft, written from Cincinnati, December 28, 1865 : " I 
read your speech on reconstruction, as I read all your speeches, 
with great interest and pleasure. With the President against 
you I suppose it is impossible to accomplish all that should be 
accomplished. I suppose you can not accomplish negro suffrage 
except in the District, where I would fight for it to the last. 
But I trust you may be able to get a constitutional amendment 
making the Federal power of every state proportional to its 
number of voters. That and the taxing of exports are so just 
and necessary that they must be insisted on and fought for. 
Negro prejudice does not stand in the way of these two meas- 
ures. The task of this Congress is all the more arduous as the 
President is so precipitate in his reconstruction policy. I hope 
he will not prove obstinate. Persevere ! The true people will 
applaud you. God bless your efforts ! " 

Hon. John L. Ketcham writes from Indianapolis, December 
24, 1866 : " Beyond all controversy yours is the true ground. 
. . . The states that went into rebellion are now only con- 
quered provinces. Their state governments are dead and 
buried and damned, and ought to be. To waste words about 
whether they are in the Union or out of the Union is all tom- 
foolery. And the men who talk so know it well. Andy John- 
son knows it. And he knows the people of the South are not 
fit to exercise political rights. When I read your speech over 
(as I did twice, every word of it) I could not but think if my 
father-in-law, Samuel Merrill, were only living, how proud he 
would be over this speech ! I tell you it has the right ring 
about it, and if Congress will go right forward the people will 
sustain them. But if they hesitate and are timid all is lost. 
The people love bold leaders and bold action, especially in the 
right. I pray God your life may be spared to establish freedom 
everywhere and to bring into disgrace treason and traitors." 

Alfred Conkling, of Genesee, New York, commended this 
" noble speech." " I can not forbear to tender to you the tribute 
of my admiration and thanks. It will secure to you an im- 
mortality of enviable fame." 

O. A. Brownson, the publicist, wrote from Elizabeth, New 
Jersey, December 19, 1865, to thank Stevens for his " admirable 
speech." " Your general views I hold to be sound and politic. 



THE BREACH WITH JOHNSON 355 

in harmony with Johnson's message, 1 which urged am- 
nesty and Southern representation and restoration of 
local control to the South at the earliest day consistent 
with public safety. The debate became general both 
in the House and the Senate. Mr. Sumner, of Mas- 
sachusetts, was particularly hostile in the Senate to 
Johnson's plan. He urged the importance of suf- 
frage and civil rights for the negroes and he painted 
in vivid colors what he called the " rebel barbarism " 
and outrages of the Southern whites against the help- 
less freedmen. The report of General Carl Schurz on 
the political temper and conditions in the South was 
called for by the Senate and used with great effect to 
sustain the case against the President. Johnson was 
irritated and his combativeness was aroused. 

Congress, proceeding to legislate for the protection 
of the emancipated blacks, passed the Freedmen's 
Bureau Bill, extending the powers and enlarging the 
staff of that bureau. Johnson was not ready to ac- 
cept this modification of his work and on February 

To pretend that the Confederate States are and have been in 
the Union is utterly absurd and mischievous. They have no 
state character and no political rights ; they are territories sub- 
ject to the Union. But I especially indorse your assertion of 
the congressional prerogative. The President has been dabbling 
with reconstruction for eight months without constitutional or 
legal warrant-" 

Reverend Doctor H. T. Cheever wrote from Worcester, Massa- 
chusetts, January 10, 1866: "You have the thanks of every loyal 
American not a trimmer for the noble stand you have taken in 
the House. Massachusetts likens you to her ' Old Man Elo- 
quent.' May God grant that Congress may not recede a hair 
from its position," and he commended Stevens as " one whom 
the people delight to honor for his eloquence and devotion to 
the rights of man as man. That God may sustain and make 
you immortal till your work is done is the prayer of myself and 
of many here." 

1 December 5, 1865. 



356 THE LIFE OF THADDEUS STEVENS 

19, 1866, he vetoed this bill, — a veto that officially 
opened the breach between the two departments of the 
government. 

This veto was obviously not based altogether on 
the merits, or the demerits, of the bill. The President 
was evidently prompted by his combativeness and by 
his resentment of personal attacks that had been made 
upon him. He was a born fighter; he had been fight- 
ing all his life, and he was not of the kind readily to 
yield to criticism or opposition. He had said, and 
he now proposed to stand up for it, that Congress had 
no right under the Constitution to exclude states from 
representation. On this rock he proposed to establish 
his plan. While the congressional leaders were per- 
versely keeping the eleven states out of the Union 
and were thus disregarding this fundamental principle 
of reconstruction the President did not intend that 
their legislation should go by unchecked. 

The veto of the Freedmen's Bureau Bill was John- 
son's declaration of war, or his acceptance of the gage 
of battle, between him and Congress, which was des- 
tined to lead to a long and uncompromising struggle. 
The first victory in this long fight rested with Johnson, 
as the Senate, by a narrow margin of two votes, sus- 
tained the veto amid the applause and hisses of its 
gallery. But the President's first victory was his last, 
for upon the very day on which the Senate sustained 
his veto, the Flouse, under the leadership of Stevens, 
adopted a concurrent resolution declaring that no Sena- 
tor or Representative should be admitted from any 
insurrectionary state until Congress should have de- 
clared the state entitled to representation. This reso- 



THE BREACH WITH JOHNSON 357 

lution the Senate adopted on March 2, 1866, and the 
two houses thus stood openly committed in opposition 
to the President's constitutional doctrine of reconstruc- 
tion. 

This resolution has been called the " counter-stroke " 
to the veto. The respective positions assumed by the 
two departments of the government were directly an- 
tagonistic and irreconcilable. One had to give way or 
be overcome. The Executive might bar the passage 
of measures which Congress wished to enact, but the 
Congressional Joint Committee on Reconstruction 
" carried on its girdle the keys of the Union," as 
Senator Cowan said, and unless it unlocked the doors 
" the wayward sisters could not get in." 1 

Antagonistic personalities as well as opposing prin- 
ciples tended to promote the breach between the Presi- 
dent and Congress. The veto of the Freedmen's Bureau 
Bill became the occasion of a public speech by John- 
son in which he indulged in unbecoming personalities, 
tending still further to aggravate the situation. To 
a serenading party that came to the White House on 
February 22, 1866, to congratulate the President on 
the success of his veto, Johnson spoke at considerable 
length. He referred to the Reconstruction Committee 
of Congress as an " irresponsible central directory," 
that was assuming nearly all the powers of Congress 
in disregard of the Constitution. " You have been 
struggling for four years to put down a rebellion. 
You contended at the beginning of that struggle that 
a state had not a right to go out. That question has 
been settled. ... I am opposed to the Davises, the 

1 Dewitt, Impeachment of Johnson, p. 58. 



358 THE LIFE OF THADDEUS STEVENS 

Toombses, the Slidells, and the long list of such. But 
when I perceive on the other hand men [a voice, " call 
them off"] I care not by what name you call them — 
still opposed to the Union, I am free to say to you that 
I am still with the people.'' Some one from the crowd 
called for the names of the members of Congress to 
whom the President alluded. " Suppose I should name 
them to you,'' replied Johnson, " those whom I look 
upon as being opposed to the fundamental principles of 
this government and as now laboring to destroy them. 
I say Thaddeus Stevens, of Pennsylvania; I say Charles 
Sumner, of Massachusetts; I say Wendell Phillips, of 
Massachusetts. [A voice, " Forney."] I do not waste 
my fire on dead ducks. I stand for the country and 
though my enemies may traduce, slander, and vituper- 
ate, I may say that has no force." 1 

It has been said that from the moment of this speech 
" personal rancor against the President filled the heart 
of Stevens, at least, if not of others." 2 It is certainly 
true that forgiveness and conciliation and the sweet 
spirit of personal charity for his opponents were not 
traits for which Stevens was especially distinguished. 
Johnson's coarse speech had brought a feeling of shame 
and humiliation to the country. It is not likely, how- 
ever, that Johnson's rage and his rash language toward 
Congress and its leaders seriously influenced Stevens' 
public policy in reconstruction. Johnson's veto of 
the Freedmen's Bureau Bill gave him a momentary 
triumph. But Stevens was now more easily able, on 
account of Johnson's personalities and rude and tact- 

1 McPherson, Reconstruction. 

2 Burgess, Reconstruction, p. 67. 



THE BREACH WITH JOHNSON 359 

less speech on February 22nd, to arouse opposition to 
the President and his plan. On March 10, 1866, Stev- 
ens improved his opportunity in his second notable 
speech on reconstruction. He restated his former 
position, that of considering the Southern States as 
in the status of conquered provinces. 

One may well disapprove of Stevens' motives and. 
purposes, but it may be safely asserted that in the 
political thinking of the time, judged either by the 
canons of political science or of constitutional law, no 
one excelled Stevens, or answered him successfully in 
argument. The position that he assumed was clear, 
straightforward, consistent from beginning to end, and 
he presented his cause with a force and ability that 
made his position seem unassailable. He was again 
accused of admitting by his doctrine the efficacy of 
secession. He denied this, and asserted that the or- 
dinances of secession amounted to nothing either in 
law or in fact. It was the formation of a regular 
hostile government, and the raising and supporting of 
large armies, and for a time maintaining their declara- 
tion of independence that made the South a belligerent 
and the contest a war. . . . He stood on the fact, 
recognized of all men. " Who is simple enough to 
believe that the assertion of a fact is the justification of 
it? The people are astute enough to discern between 
the right and the fact." 

Stevens held that the war had not disorganized the 
rebel states. They had continued under state govern- 
ments and their relation to the United States did not 
affect that question. Others contended that the loyal 
people formed the state ; he thought that all the people 



360 THE LIFE OF THADDEUS STEVENS 

within its jurisdiction who are legal citizens have an 
equal part in making up the state, without regard to 
character; the control of republics depends on the 
number not on the quality of voters. " This is not 
a government of saints," he said ; " it has a large sprin- 
kling of sinners. The Confederate States continued to 
be well-organized states out of the Union, under laws, 
it is true, different from those of the United States. 
If they were not out of the Union the logical position 
would be, as some contend, that they might at any 
time send representatives here and demand admission 
without asking leave of any one. ... In what de- 
plorable guilt does it involve the President to declare 
that the states were never out of the Union! What 
rank usurpation has he practised in intermeddling 
with the domestic affairs of the state! All states in 
the Union are equal. How long could the President 
stay in the White House if he should attempt in New 
York or Pennsylvania what he had done in South 
Carolina and Alabama? If I believed as the gentle- 
men do I should deem it the duty of Congress forth- 
with to present articles of impeachment." 

He contended that what the President had done he 
had done not to states in the Union, but to conquered 
provinces, and that, not under any power in the con- 
stitution, but as a commander exercising military 
authority. The President appoints a Governor in Ten- 
nessee, authorizes him to call a constitutional conven- 
tion, fixes the qualification of voters and finally orders 
certain things for the convention to adopt in the con- 
stitution. Obedience was instantaneous, thanks to the 
virtue of martial law and fixed bavonets! What a 



THE BREACH WITH JOHNSON 361 

free, republican, constitutional restoration this is! So 
with the other states. Johnson's government of Vir- 
ginia was even worse. There " the free representa- 
tives of fragments of about eleven townships out of 
one hundred and forty-two counties, elected in spots 
between the contending armies on disputed ground, 
twelve men, who met within the Federal lines, called 
itself a convention, formed a constitution, ordered elec- 
tions for the whole state, and Governor Pierpont re- 
ceived about thirty-three hundred votes for Governor 
(half Yankee soldiers, I suspect) and was proclaimed 
in the market house of Alexandria, the Governor of 
imperial Virginia, the mother of statesmen ! . . . This 
is one of the twenty-seven states that adopted the con- 
stitutional amendment ! I am fond of genteel comedy, 
but this low farce is too vulgar to be acted on the 
stage of nations. Are these the free republics such as 
the United States is bound to guarantee to all the states 
in the Union? Should these swindlers, these impos- 
tors, bred in the midst of martial law, without author- 
ity from Congress, be acknowledged here? " 

In reply to the suggestion that the Southern com- 
munities had been sufficiently punished, he said that 
one might search the whole records of crime from the 
rebellion of the angels and the first transgression of 
man to the present day, and " you can find nowhere so 
great a crime so inadequately punished." They were 

punished only in the pugilistic sense of having been 
knocked out in a fight. Did any respectable govern- 
ment ever before allow such high criminals to escape 
with such shameful impunity? I have never desired 
bloody punishments to any great extent, even for the 



362 THE LIFE OF THADDEUS STEVENS 

sake of example. But there are punishments quite as 
appalling, and longer remembered than death. They 
are more advisable because they would reach a greater 
number. Strip a proud nobility of their bloated es- 
tates; reduce them to a level with plain republicans; 
send them forth to labor, and teach their children to 
enter the workshops or handle the plow and to respect 
labor, and you will thus humble the proud traitors." 

He named again the reforms he expected to see in- 
corporated in the Constitution. He had no fear that 
the people would surrender the fruits of victory. Only 
a few in Congress would grow weak in the knees at 
the footstool of power. " You can easily designate 
them by their shuffling, cringing, fawning manner. 
They never stand erect when manhood is required. 
But the great majority will stand by their own honor 
and their country's welfare. If these reforms are not 
accomplished, then in three short years this whole gov- 
ernment will be in the hands of the late rebels and 
their Northern allies." He would put the conquered 
territory under territorial governments and let them 
know that in adopting amendments their aid would be 
neither invited nor permitted, and when they came 
again to enter the Union they would swear allegiance 
to a constitution remodeled without their consent. 

It was in a diversion in the midst of this speech 
that Stevens uttered his notable mock eulogy of Presi- 
dent Johnson, in which we find a specimen of Stev- 
ens' scathing satirical invective. For ability and ef- 
fectiveness in this line of attack it is probable that, in 
all the annals of American politics, Stevens stands 
without an equal. It is difficult to believe, in view of 



THE BREACH WITH JOHNSON 363 

the context, as Air. McCall seems to do, that Stev- 
ens uttered even any part of his tribute to the Presi- 
dent with a candid and serious purpose. He did say 
in the beginning of his personal allusion what seemed 
to be serious words, and no doubt he spoke in grave 
and solemn tones. He asserted that he had no feel- 
ing of enmity toward the President but respect rather, 
and " honor for his integrity, patriotism, courage, and 
good intentions." He disclaimed any personal hos- 
tility to the President, but he proposed to oppose and 
denounce his policy ; as it would be to forget the ob- 
loquy that he had calmly borne for thirty years in 
the war for liberty, if he should turn craven now. Mr. 
Price, of Iowa, appeared to accept this personal allu- 
sion to the President as a candid and intentional com- 
pliment on the part of Stevens and he interrupted the 
latter to ask whether it were possible that the " Thad'' 
Stevens " now eulogizing the President could be the 
same as the " Thad Stevens " referred to in the late 
White House speech. The question might have been 
anticipated, or prearranged. At any rate it gave 
Stevens his opportunity, and he turned from his mild 
tone of compliment and conciliation toward the Presi- 
dent to one of mean and satirical abuse. It may be 
that the passage of coarse and abusive invective, in 
which Stevens now indulged and which his friends 
may well wish had been omitted from an otherwise 
worthy speech, may have come from the impulse and 
taunt of the moment, without premeditation or personal 
malice aforethought. However that may be, he pro- 
ceeded to express surprise that the learned gentleman 
should refer to the White House speech as if it were 



364 THE LIFE OF THADDEUS STEVENS 

a fact. He then offered to make a confidential com- 
munication and he hoped none present would violate 
his confidence, for fear his motives might be mis- 
understood. He desired the tlouse and the country to 
understand that the so-called speech of the President 
was one of the grandest hoaxes ever perpetrated, more 
successful than any except the moon hoax which had 
deceived so many astute astronomers. He was glad of 
the opportunity to exonerate the President from ever 
having made that speech. " It is a part of the cunning 
contrivance of the Copperhead party who have been 
persecuting our President since the fourth of March 
last " to make the people believe that the President ever 
made such a speech. " Why, sir, taking advantage of 
an unfortunate incident which happened on that occa- 
sion * [laughter] they have been constantly denouncing 
him as addicted to low and degrading vices." To 
prove the truth of this hoax and his view, Stevens sent 
to the desk and had read and put on record an editorial 
of March 7, 1865, from the Democratic New York 
World, which was now supporting Johnson's policy 
on reconstruction. This editorial compared Johnson 
to " the drunken and beastly Caligula, the most prof- 
ligate of the Roman emperors," and referred to the 
disgrace that he had brought upon an honorable office 
once held by an Adams and a Jefferson, a Calhoun and 
a Van Buren. And " now," the editorial ran, " to 
see the office filled by this insolent drunken brute," 
and " only one frail life between this clownish drunk- 
ard and the presidency ! " Jiaving brought this 

1 Referring to the drunken condition of Johnson at the time 
of his inauguration as Vice-President- 



THE BREACH WITH JOHNSON 365 

editorial to the publicity of the record, Stevens then 
proceeded to denounce it as a slander, and as a proof 
that this Copperhead party had been persecuting the 
President. " We never credited it but looked with in- 
dignation upon the slander which was thus uttered 
against the President of our choice. My friend be- 
fore me * if he were trying in court a case dc lunatico 
inquirendo, and if, the outside evidence being doubt- 
ful, leaving it questionable whether the jury would 
adopt the view that insanity existed, he should cau- 
tiously lead the alleged lunatic to speak upon the sub- 
ject of the hallucination, and if he could be induced 
to gabble nonsense, the intrinsic evidence would make 
out the case of insanity. So if these slanderers can 
make the people believe that the President uttered that 
speech they have made out their case. But we all 
know that he never did utter it. The people may have 
been deceived but we who knew the President knew it 
was a lie from the start." Having exposed this 
mendacious libel, he then expressed the hope that he 
might be permitted to occupy the same friendly posi- 
tion with the President that he had held before. 

Here is revealed one of the most untoward events 
in our history, namely, that while facing a problem 
of great complexity, the country was vexed by a per- 
sonal quarrel and a party brawl that were calculated to 
inflame the passions and to obscure the judgment of 
all concerned. It was most unfortunate that the issue 
of reconstruction should have been determined, or in 
any way impaired, by a personal contest between two 
such men as Johnson and Stevens. Both were honest 

1 Bingham, of Ohio. 



366 THE LIFE OF THADDEUS STEVENS 

and patriotic men, but both had intensely passionate 
and combative dispositions. They were unyielding in 
temper, and were without that deeper statesmanlike 
wisdom that leads men to look above themselves to the 
higher ends of the state. After these personal insults 
had been bandied between them it was hardly possible 
that they could be brought to work together in harmony 
toward a common end. They were not reconcilable. 

It has been said that this bitter personal speech of 
Stevens had for its purpose the goading of Johnson 
to veto the Civil Rights Bill that was soon to come 
before him. Johnson's acceptance of that bill would 
have brought him great support in Congress and 
in the country. It was not inconsistent with his 
scheme of reconstruction, and he might have ac- 
cepted it without the surrender of a single principle 
that he had professed. His veto of it left him without 
hope, and gave Stevens and the radicals the right of 
way. From the time of that veto the breach between 
Congress and the President was complete and seem- 
ingly irreparable. More and more, from that time, the 
temper of the congressional leaders became personally 
antagonistic toward Johnson. They felt that he was 
insincere and prone to treachery; that he had broken 
faith and betrayed the party that had elevated him to 
power; that he was obstinate, ungentlemanly, coarse, 
and ill-tempered, and that, having changed his mind, 
he was angry and vengeful toward all others who 
would not change theirs. There followed charges and 
countercharges, threats and counter-threats. Johnson 
professed to see in the suggestion of the congressional 
leaders that the " presidential obstacle would have to 



THE BREACH WITH JOHNSON 367 

be removed," a threat of assassination, while the radical 
leaders constantly manifested a growing disrespect of 
the President, jeering at his name, putting aside his 
messages unread, and referring to him as " only acting- 
President by right of assassination." They professed 
to believe that the President was capable of attempting 
a bold military usurpation by a coup d'etat, in that he 
might refuse to recognize Congress as a legitimate body 
and, instead, recognize a Congress of his own making, 
and thus plunge the country into a new civil war. This 
suspicious fear had its basis partly in the fact that 
the President was constantly referring to Congress 
as "only a part of Congress" and to its Joint Com- 
mittee on Reconstruction as " an irresponsible direc- 
tory," and partly because of certain rash and startling 
utterances of some of the President's supporters in 
Congress. Senator Garrett Davis, of Kentucky, said 
in the Senate that the President had a right to decide 
what body of men constituted Congress, since he had 
to communicate with the two houses. " Whenever 
Andrew Johnson," said Davis, " chooses to say to the 
Southern Senators, ' Get together with the Dem- 
ocrats and the conservatives of the Senate, and if you 
constitute a majority, I will recognize you as the Senate 
of the United States,' what then will become of you 
gentlemen ? You will quietly come in and form a part 
of the Senate." * 

There was thus engendered a situation full of dis- 
trust, suspicion, and soreness. It was, at best, a state 
of political war, to which were added many features of 
a partisan and personal wrangle. The issue was 

1 Globe, App., pp. 300-304, cited by Dewitt, p. 57. 



368 THE LIFE OF THADDEUS STEVENS 

joined. The question was whether the policy of John- 
son or that of the radicals, led by Stevens and Sumner, 
should prevail. On that issue appeal was to be made 
to the country and the congressional leaders set about 
to formulate their plan. 



CHAPTER XV 

THE FIRST CONGRESSIONAL PLAN 

WE have noticed the reasons that led to the re- 
jection of Johnson's reconstruction. When the 
breach with the President had become irretrievable 
Congress addressed itself to providing a plan of its 
own, such as would safeguard the interests that the 
congressional leaders felt had been flagrantly disre- 
garded in the plan of the President. 

Their first efforts were directed to providing ade- 
quate protection for the negro. The first agency em- 
ployed for this purpose was the Freedman's Bureau. 
The original act establishing this bureau was passed 
on March 3rd, 1865. It was made an arm of the war 
department, was established under conditions of war, 
and the act was to expire one year after the termina- 
tion of hostilities. Its object was to protect and sup- 
port the freedmen within the territory controlled by 
the Union forces. Clothing and fuel were to be given 
to the destitute. Vacant lands were to be parceled 
out to freedmen and refugees, — not more than forty 
acres to any one individual, and protection in the use 
of the land was promised for three years. 

The Southerners charged that this bureau had a 
bad effect ; that it led the blacks to believe that the gov- 
ernment was going to support them ; that good old 

369 



3/0 THE LIFE OF THADDEUS STEVENS 

plantation darkies were turned into vagabonds and 
loafers, each looking for the happy day when " de land 
was goin' fur to be dewided " and every darky would 
have his " forty acres and a mule." Such considera- 
tions were urged as an apology for the black codes 
of the South. 

There may have been mistakes or bad management 
in the local administration of the bureau. But the mo- 
tive of the act was that of mercy and charity for the 
freedmen, and General O. O. Howard, who was at the 
head of the bureau, was a man of generous and benev- 
olent impulses, whose services to the South were of 
the highest order. Common humanity demanded that 
the ignorant and helpless negroes, without money and 
without homes, should not be left helpless upon the 
world. " Without the bureau," said the congressional 
committee, " the colored people would not be permitted 
to labor at fair prices and could hardly live in safety. 
It was impossible to abandon them. The whole civ- 
ilized world would have cried out against such base 
ingratitude, and the bare idea is offensive to all right 
thinking men." * 

The Freedmen's Bureau Act which Johnson vetoed 2 
extended the time and enlarged the effective force of 
this bureau. Military protection was provided for 
its officers and agents. In addition to the " forty 
acres," schoolhouses and asylums were to be provided 
and protection was to be afforded in all criminal cases 
when equal civil rights were denied. Johnson's veto 
was based on the ground that this was a war measure 

1 Report of the Cong. Com., June 18, 1866. 

2 February 19, 1866. 



THE FIRST CONGRESSIONAL PLAN 371 



in time of peace, indefinite in time, and operative over 
territory where the civil authority of the United States 
was undisputed. The President held that a state of 
war no longer existed, and that the great army of of- 
ficials provided for in the act involved too great an 
expense, and that it conferred too much patronage and 
power for any one man to wield. The act, he as- 
serted, was unconstitutional, as by it the United States 
government was to assume functions on behalf of 
negroes that it had never been authorized to assume 
on behalf of white men. It was calculated to coddle 
the negro to his detriment. And besides, and this was 
of the highest importance in Johnson's mind, this leg- 
islation was undertaken while the eleven states that 
were most affected were unrepresented in Congress. 
Johnson's veto compassed the defeat of this measure, 
greatly to the disappointment and displeasure of the 
Northern advocates of the freedmen's interests. 1 
/ The second attempt of Congress to secure the rights 
'and protection of the freedmen was involved in the 
Civil Rights Bill. The purpose of this bill was to 
establish equality of citizenship, to place the negro on 
the same civil footing as the white man, and it in- 
volved substantially the provisions afterward inserted 
in the fourteenth amendment on that subject. It pro- 
vided that all persons born in the United States and 
not subject to any foreign power, excluding Indians 
not taxed, were to be recognized as citizens of the 
United States. On all these, of whatever class or 

1 On July 16, 1866, after the breach with Congress had be- 
come complete, a new Freedmen's Bureau Bill was passed over 
the veto of the President, containing the essential features of 
the bill that was vetoed in February. 



372 THE LIFE OF THADDEUS STEVENS 

color, were to be conferred the rights to sue; to make 
and enforce contracts; to give evidence; to inherit; to 
buy, lease, sell, hold and convey real and personal 
property, and to have the benefit of equal laws for 
security of life and liberty. This protection was to be 
secured, not, as under the Freedmen's Bureau Bill, by 
the operation of military power, but by the usual 
operation of the civil courts. Pains and penalties 
were provided for violation of the act against any one 
who, under color of state laws,! might discriminate 
against any citizen on account of race, color or pre- 
vious condition of servitude. 1 

This legislation marks a departure in the juris- 
prudence of the United States. Not until then had the 
central government assumed to define and protect civil 
equality within the states. " But it was a change," 
says Professor Burgess, " which history had forced 
upon the country," and it was but a recognition of the 
vital fact that " real civil liberty is always national." 2 
It was ably contended by the supporters of this bill 
that the nation had legalized the change by the adop- 
tion of the fourteenth amendment, and the issue that it 
presented may be recognized as one of the most funda- 
mental in the history of American constitutional law. 
Shall the state or shall the nation be the guardian of 
civil liberty in America? 

Johnson's veto of this bill on March 29, 1866, is a 
landmark in the struggle over reconstruction. It 
raised the direct issue between the President and Con- 

1 The penalty might be a fine of one thousand dollars, or a 
year's imprisonment, or both. 

2 Reconstruction and the Constitution, p. 70. 



THE FIRST CONGRESSIONAL PLAN 373 

gress, and made it apparent that either he or the con- 
gressional leaders must give way or be overridden. 
Johnson was insistent upon two points : first, that 
there should be speedy recognition and readmission of 
his reconstructed states; and, second, that the blacks 
should be left to state control. That Congress re- 
fused to accept his reconstructed states was to John- 
son a personal offense, and his veto of the Civil Rights 
Bill showed his combative and petulant spirit. The 
measure was not inconsistent with his plan of recon- 
struction. 1 Johnson had not indicated that he had any 
objection to the Civil Rights Bill until after its pas- 
sage. The veto was a part of his struggle of deter- 
mined oppostion to a Congress that had refused to 
accept what he had done. V This bill was framed in 
harmony with what he himself professed to have been 
doing to protect the freedmen in their civil rights 
throughout the rebellious states. It was strictly limited 
to the protection of the civil rights belonging to every 
free man, the birthright of every American citizen, 
and it carefully avoided conferring, or interfering 
with, political rights or privileges of any kind. It 
conferred no rights, and abridged no rights. It sim- 
ply declared that in civil rights there should be an 
equality among all classes of citizens, and that all shall 
be subject to the same punishments and the same pro- 
tection. Each state might grant or withhold such 
civil rights as it pleases; all that the nation was re- 

a "The measure did not militate against the President's plan 
of reconstruction. He could have accepted it without compro- 
mising that plan in the slightest, and it was a monumental 
blunder on his part that he did not do so." Burgess, Recon- 
struction and the Constitution. 



374 THE LIFE OF THADDEUS STEVENS 

quiring in the Civil Rights Act was that in this respect 
the laws shall be impartial. 1 

The general government in thus defining citizen- 
ship, in saying who should be citizens of the United 
States, and in requiring that state laws should treat 
all citizens with equal and impartial justice, was un- 
doubtedly within its legal rights. The path of its duty 
was as clearly manifest. There is no more sacred 
nor fundamental function for a nation to perform than 
to secure justice among men and to require, in the dis- 
pensation of justice, that men of all kinds and ranks 
and creeds shall be treated without discrimination. 

Over against the assertion of national power and 
duty, Johnson set the rights of equal states. The late 
insurrectionary states, according to his view, were now 
in the Union, and South Carolina was entitled to 
all such rights, privileges, and immunities as Massa- 
chusetts or any other state. He regarded it as an 
assumption of power in Congress to attempt to make 
freedmen into citizens while eleven states were unrep- 
resented. Such an act, moreover, was a discrimina- 
tion in favor of the ignorant negroes against unnatu- 
ralized foreigners. The exercise of power by the cen- 
tral government to secure civil equality within the 
states, he asserted, would destroy the Federal system, 
and would be degrading to the states and their offi- 
cials, while the proposed military enforcement of the 
law by national power was unconstitutional. 

There was much fear among the Republicans that 

1 Trumbull, April 4, 1866, Globe, p. 1760. Trumbull's able 
exposition of tbe purpose and scope of this act seemed to leave 
no tenable grounds for its opponents to stand on. 



THE FIRST CONGRESSIONAL PLAN 375 

Johnson's veto might be sustained. The struggle in 
the Senate in order to get the necessary two-thirds 
vote to overcome the veto is one of the most memorable 
parliamentary struggles in our history. The radical 
cause was at stake and the congressional leaders felt 
that if they were defeated here and the President's 
veto were sustained they might be defeated ultimately. 
It has been charged that Senator Stockton's seat in the 
Senate was contested and declared vacant from this 
motive; that Senator Morrill, of Maine, was induced 
to relieve himself unfairly of a pair for the sake of a 
vote, and that Stevens brought about delay in the con- 
gressional vote on the veto in order to gain time to 
enable Senator Edmunds, of Vermont, to qualify and 
be seated in place of Senator Foote, who had just died. 1 
There were fifty Senators. Eleven of these were 
Democrats. Four of the Republicans were out-and- 
out supporters of the President, while three others were 
inclined that way. The attitude of Willey, of West 
Virginia, and Morgan, of New York (who had been 
under the influence of Seward), was uncertain, and it 
was therefore seen that the result was in jeopardy. 
On the evening of April 5th, the minority proposed 
that the vote on the veto be postponed till the morrow 
in order that two of the President's supporters, Dixon, 
of Connecticut, and Wright, of New Jersey, who were 
ill in the capital, might be able to attend. Wright, an- 
swering the urgent call of his party, had arrived in the 
capital in a feeble condition, in the care of his son. 
Dixon was ready to be carried in that he might cast 

1 See Dewitt's Impeachment of Johnson and Flack's Fourteenth 
Amendment. 



376 THE LIFE OF THADDEUS STEVENS 

his vote to sustain the President. It was under these 
circumstances that Mr. Hendricks, of Indiana, speak- 
ing for the Democrats, asked, as a matter of comity, 
for a postponement of the vote, saying that if the sick 
Senators were not able to come on the morrow at the 
time fixed no further delay would be asked. 

It appears that the testing time was at hand in the 
struggle for the two-thirds. It was at this time, when 
" the suspense was so heavy that business was inter- 
rupted and Senators were gathering in buzzing groups 
or moving to and fro with hurried mien " * that Ben 
Wade, of Ohio, the undaunted radical, gave forth one 
of his heated and partisan outbursts against the Presi- 
dent and his policy and in favor of the bill. " I view 
this," he said, " as one of the greatest and fundamental 
questions that ever came before the Senate. The 
President has no power to interpose his authority to 
prescribe the principle upon which these states shall 
be admitted to the Union. He is to execute the laws 
that we make. We are to judge the forms of govern- 
ment under which the states shall exist. We are not 
to be wheedled out of this power by the President. — 
The great question of congressional power and author- 
ity is at stake here, and I shall yield to no importunities 
on the other side. I will not yield to these appeals to 
comity on a question like this ; but I will tell the Presi- 
dent and everybody else that if God Almighty has 
stricken one member so that he can not be here to up- 
hold the dictation of a despot, I thank Him for His in- 
terposition and I will take advantage of it if I can." 2 

1 Dcwitt, Impeachment of Johnson, p. 8l- 

2 Globe, April 5, 1866, p. 1786. 



THE FIRST CONGRESSIONAL PLAN 377 

On the other hand, Democrats like Saulsbury, of 
Delaware, equally imbued with the spirit of partisan- 
ship and afflicted with an unreasoning" prejudice against 
the free negro, declaimed against the purpose to pass 
this bill as a scheme to inaugurate revolution and to 
" plunge the country again into the horrors of civil 
war." He warned the people of the country that they 
should set their house in order to resist the radicals who 
were perpetrating this great wrong and who were 
" trampling into dust the bleeding, mangled body of the 
Constitution of their country lying in their pathway." 
He thought that if a state legislature passed a law dis- 
criminating between white and black the people of the 
state would never allow their legislature to be dragged 
from their legislative halls by free-negro agents sent 
by free-negro commissioners; nor did he suppose that 
an honest judiciary in a state would observe " an act 
so flagrantly unconstitutional." * 

Rather than undergo an all night's session the Sen- 
ate adjourned; but on April 6, 1866, the struggle for 
the two-thirds was won by a single vote, and the Presi- 
dent's veto was overridden. 2 

Shorter work of the veto was made in the House. 
The bill was passed there under the management of 
Stevens by the application of the previous question, 
without debate, by a vote of one hundred and twenty- 
two to forty-one, — twenty-one members not voting. 
v Stevens was like Wade. He had no scruples about 
disregarding comity for the sake of his cause. He 

1 Saulsbury in the Senate, April 6, 1866, Globe, p. 1809. 

2 Yeas, 23'< nays, 15; Dixon absent; Morgan and Willey voting 
against the President. 



378 THE LIFE OF. THADDEUS STEVENS 

was no doubt ready to resort to whatever strategic 
measures the politics of the situation seemed to make 
necessary in order to compass the defeat of the Presi- 
dent. He spared no pains nor energy to that end. He 
believed that Johnson's vetoes and his opposition to 
Congress were leading ex-Confederates to think that 
the administration, with its power and patronage, in 
combination with the conservative Republicans and the 
whole Democratic party in the North, would finally 
enable them to determine for themselves their own po- 
litical status as well as that of the freedmen. In Stev- 
ens' mind, the leaders of the South were still alive to 
the same old struggle as in the days before the war, — 
the purpose with them was to control the government. 
It was a struggle for power, and the defeated Con- 
federates, instead of accepting such conditions as a 
conquering nation saw fit to impose, were now expect- 
ing that, on Johnson's terms, they would be restored 
to control not only in their own states but in the af- 
fairs of the nation. This, Stevens thought, must be 
prevented at every hazard. Stevens regarded the per- 
sistent contention of Johnson that these Southerners 
should have seats in Congress, as an " arrogant de- 
mand." It was intolerable that the men of the North 
should be asked to admit to the seats of power the very 
men who had led the Rebellion for four years against 
the laws and sovereignty of the United States. The 
Republican war party in the North, now in absolute 
control in Congress, looked upon these Southern men 
as " rebels " and " traitors," whom they had had to 
fight for four years in order to save the Union from 
destruction. The leopard's spots had not been 



THE FIRST CONGRESSIONAL PLAN 379 

changed within a year and the purposes of these 
" rebels " were still unchanged. They had shown no 
change of heart nor humbleness of spirit. Was it 
reasonable to suppose that this Republican majority 
while they had the power to prevent it, would permit 
these men to come back into political privileges and 
power through a combination with Johnson and the 
Northern Democrats? These Northern Democrats, 
these Southerners demanding their seats, and Johnson 
from his high office, — all had denounced the Civil 
Rights Bill as unconstitutional. If that were true, it 
was the bounden duty of the Republicans to see to it 
that before the Southern States were restored to their 
political privileges there should be such changes in the 
organic law of the nation as would guarantee civil 
rights forever to the freedmen and would make secure 
and permanent the great results of the war. 

The Civil Rights Bill was passed over the President's 
veto by the narrowest margin. There were others, 
however, aside from Johnson and his supporters, who 
believed it was unconstitutional. John A. Bingham, 
of Ohio, an able lawyer and himself one of the radical 
leaders, made a long and able argument against it, — 
not against its principle, but against the constitutional 
power of Congress to pass it. He believed that, under 
the " Constitution as it was," Congress had no power 
to declare that there should be no discrimination of 
civil rights among citizens in any state; that political 
righ ts, such as suffrage, were embraced in the term civil 
rights: and it was known that there was hardly a state 
in the Union but what made some discrimination in its 
laws on account of race or color; that the enforcement 



380 THE LIFE OF THADDEUS STEVENS 

of the Bill of Rights, the protection of life, liberty and 
property, within the states was not one of the dele- 
gated powers of Congress, but had been reserved to the 
states. Bingham was easily able to show that the de- 
cisions of the Supreme Court were in harmony with his 
argument; that while the United States government 
was forbidden to make any discrimination or deprive 
any person of life, liberty or property without due 
process of law, this limitation did not apply to the 
states. 1 

Other opponents of Johnson and friends of the 
freedmen, like Bingham, had grave doubts concerning 
the final outcome of this legislation. They believed 
that the principle of the bill should be embraced in the 
law of every state, and lived up to, and as it was per- 
fectly obvious that the Southern States would not give 
equal rights to the freedmen of their own accord, they 
should be compelled to do so by expressly prohibiting 
every state from violating this principle. But the rem- 
edy, they contended, was not in assuming a power not 
delegated, but rather in an amendment to the Constitu- 
tion. While they recognized that it might be reason- 
ably contended that such powers pertained to Congress 
under a broad construction of the thirteenth amend- 
ment, on the principle that slavery was nothing more 
than extreme inequality in civil rights and that under 
the power to enforce its abolition all inequality might 
be prevented, yet it was by no means certain that the 
courts would take this broad view, and the Civil Rights 
Act, if not subsequently repealed by a hostile Congress, 
might be declared void by the courts. 

1 Barron vs. Baltimore, Globe, March g, 1866. 



THE FIRST CONGRESSIONAL PLAN 381 

It was these considerations that led to the first clause 
of the fourteenth amendment. Stevens in discussing 
it * emphasized these considerations. He recognized 
that the Constitution limited only the power of Con- 
gress to deny civil rights and was not a limitation on 
the states. The amendment would supply that defect 
and provide that the law that operates upon one man 
shall operate equally upon all ; that which affords pro- 
tection to the white man shall equally protect the black. 
No law shall have respect to the color of the skin. 
Stevens called the attention of the House to the fact 
that the Civil Rights Bill did not make these rights 
secure. " I need hardly say that the first time that 
the South with their Copperhead allies obtain the com- 
mand of Congress it will be repealed. The veto of 
the President and their votes are conclusive evidence 
of that. The amendment once adopted can not be 
annulled without two-thirds of Congress and that 
they will hardly get. Yet some were guilty of the 
madness of proposing to readmit these states before 
this becomes a part of the Constitution." 2 

There can be no doubt that the principle underlying 
the Civil Rights Bill and here incorporated in the Con- 
stitution, was in harmony with fundamental democracy 
and righteous law. It means merely that the law 
should be no respecter of persons. It served notice 
that the whites of the South were not to be given spe- 
cial privileges nor the blacks to be visited with special 
penalties. It was passed to secure legal protection to 
the black man, but its underlying purpose was broader 

1 May 8, 1866. 

2 Globe, Vol. 73, p. 2459, May 8, 1866. 



382 THE LIFE OF THADDEUS STEVENS 

than that. It sought to secure to every man within 
the pale of national citizenship and under the egis of 
national law, equality of rights and opportunities. It 
proclaimed civil liberty throughout the land to all the 
inhabitants thereof, any law or custom in any state to 
the contrary notwithstanding. It was democratic in 
its spirit, sound in its political science, righteous in its 
morality, since civil equality is the first principle of 
public justice. It is poor apology or palliation for the 
black codes of the South to plead that they sought 
merely to " set the freedmen apart as a special class 
with a status at law corresponding to their status in 
fact," * as if the law may justly recognize a varying 
or diverse social status among men. Under hateful 
governments and in hateful times, the law had recog- 
nized distinctions in social classes. But in setting up a 
new government in the world, our fathers had made 
it their plea that they sought to escape from such con- 
ditions and from aristrocratic systems under which 
some men were recognized as having been born booted 
and spurred ready for riding, while others were sad- 
dled and bridled ready to be ridden; under which the 
raiment of the toilers was prescribed in law, and the 
toe of the peasant must not come too near the heel of 
the courtier whose garments, as well as whose privi- 
leges, were special and distinct. Democracy in Amer- 
ica, as everywhere in the world, stood for a different 
principle, — of equal and exact justice to all men alike 
before the law. That was the principle of the first 
section of the fourteenth amendment. It was writ- 
ten in the Declaration of Independence and in the 
1 Dunning, Reconstruction, p. 63. 



THE FIRST CONGRESSIONAL PLAN 383 

American Bill of Rights, — that the law is for all alike, 
high or low, rich or poor, white or black, Greek or 
Barbarian, Jew or Gentile, and for men of all races, 
conditions and creeds. 1 

This was the principle of the Civil Rights Amend- 
ment to the Constitution. To secure it was but to 
carry to its natural fruition and completion the great 
humanitarian movement for the emancipation of the 
slaves. The two movements were one. With Thad- 
deus Stevens, this principle of human equality was im- 
bedded in the marrow of his bones. He was a demo- 
crat. To the cause of fundamental democracy he had 
shown undoubted loyalty throughout a long and stormy 
political life, and for that cause, it may readily be be- 
lieved, he stood ready to show forth the last full meas- 
ure of devotion. It was a noble cause, and in the hard 
fighting for it, which the men of his day and genera- 
tion witnessed, no man struck harder blows nor proved 
more faithful and efficient than Thaddeus Stevens. 
He thought the time had come in rebuilding the shat- 
tered nation, to write that principle into the funda- 
mental law of the land, as it had been originally pro- 
claimed in the immortal Declaration of Independence. 
He believed that our fathers intended this great prin- 
ciple of the Declaration of Independence to lie at the 
foundation of our government, and if they had been 
able to base their Constitution upon it, it would have 
needed no amendment, as every human being would 
have had his rights and would have been equal to 

_ 1 As Horace Greeley expressed it, there should be " equal 
rights for all alike, regardless of color, — white, black, red, 
brown, ring-streaked or speckled." 



384 THE LIFE OF THADDEUS STEVENS 

every other before the law. " But it so happened 
when our fathers came to reduce the principles on 
which they founded this government into order, in 
shaping the organic law, an institution hot from hell 
appeared among them, which has been increasing in 
volume and guilt ever since. This obstructed their 
movements and caused postponement and compromise. 
But now the time has come when this black popula- 
tion are to be treated as our fathers declared by solemn 
declaration they ought to be treated, or to be op- 
pressed by us as insolent tyrants, by which we shall 
deserve the execration of the human race. . . . The 
time has come when we can make the Constitution 
what our fathers desired to make it, when through 
blood every stain has been washed out unless we 
choose to reestablish it." 1 

Referring to " the utterance of one at the other end 
of the avenue " to the effect that the Constitution 
needed no amendment, Stevens said he had rather not 
live than live and be disgraced by such a sentiment. 
He wished that we should not continue to crush be- 
neath our feet four millions of immortal men. 2 

In presenting the fourteenth amendment to the 
House and opening debate upon it (May 8, 1866), 
Stevens gave renewed expressions of devotion to these 
principles. For a century he said the public mind had 
been educated in error which it was difficult to unlearn. 
In rebuilding it was necessary to clear away the rotten 
and defective portion of the old foundations. He 
would sink the new piles deep to rock bottom, and the 
repaired edifice should stand upon the firm foundation 
1 Globe, January 31, 18C6. - Globe, January 31, 1866. 



THE FIRST CONGRESSIONAL PLAN 385 

of eternal justice. His plea was for just treatment 
to every human being upon the continent, for the great 
democratic principle announced by Jefferson, — " equal 
rights to all and special privileges to none." 

The second object in view in the congressional plan 
was the readjustment of political power by changing 
the basis of representation. Stevens' first proposal of 
an amendment on this subject, offered in December, 
provided that representation should be based on legal 
voters, none to be named as legal voters except natural 
born citizens and naturalized foreigners. The object 
of this was either to secure for the negro the right of 
suffrage or to reduce the South's proportion of political 
power. There were two alternatives to this proposi- 
tion having the same root idea and the same object in 
view. One was to deprive the states of all power to 
discriminate politically on account of race or color; the 
second, to leave every state perfectly free to decide 
for itself who should vote and belong to its political 
community, but in so deciding it should by the same 
choice decide who shall enter into its basis of repre- 
sentation and who shall be shut out. " What a state 
should decide for itself in its own affairs it should de- 
cide for itself in its national affairs.'' * 

Objection soon developed to basing representation 
on voters. It might open the door to inequalities. 
California might let her Chinese and half-breeds vote, 
Oregon, her Indians, and any state, its aliens. Even 
if state legislation were uniform, some injustice 
might be worked toward those states in which the 
women outnumber the men, from which the young 

1 Conkling, in the House, January 22, 1866. 



386 THE LIFE OF THADDEUS STEVENS 

men were going west in quest of fortune. It was 
thought that New England would lose heavily by the 
change and it was charged that " the real objection to 
the male suffrage basis was the fear of taking away 
power from fanatical New England." x Mr. Blaine, 
of Maine, thought the incidental evils of the amend- 
ment too great to permit of its adoption. He at- 
tempted to show that the ratio of voters to population 
differed widely in different sections, from a minimum 
of nineteen per cent, to a maximum of fifty-eight per 
cent, and he asserted that the changes which this fact 
would work in the relative representation of certain 
states would be " monstrous." By the apportionment 
.on the census of i860, Vermont and California each 
had three members of the House. On the basis of 
voters, if Vermont retained three, California would 
have eight. Ohio, with seven and a half times the 
population of California, would have little more than 
two and a half times the representation, while New 
York, with eleven times the population, would have 
but five times the representation. On the new basis, 
if Massachusetts retained her ten votes in the House, 
Indiana would have fifteen instead of eleven, while if 
Indiana retained eleven, Massachusetts would have but 
seven. 

Mr. Blaine disclaimed offering his objection on ac- 
count of the interest of his section, but it is difficult 
to believe that this consideration did not enter in. Mr. 
Blaine argued also that the first proposal of Stevens 
would tend to cheapen the suffrage everywhere. The 

1 Conkling, in the House, January 22, 1866. This is not 
quoted as Conkling's opinion. 



THE FIRST CONGRESSIONAL PLAN 387 

states would scramble to increase their voters ; all con- 
servative restrictions would be stricken down, and the 
ballot would be demoralized and disgraced. Mr. 
Blaine professed anxiety to accomplish the end in view, 
that is, to deprive the South of representation, but he 
thought it could be done without imposing these of- 
fensive inequalities among the other states. He in- 
sisted that population should be retained as the basis 
of representation, and he proposed a wording for the 
amendment to the effect that the population should be 
determined " by taking the whole number of persons 
except those to whom civil or political rights are denied 
or abridged by the Constitution, and laws of any state 
on account of race or color." Mr. Conkling showed 
by elaborate tables that Mr. Blaine's calculation was 
without foundation, that it had no practical bearing 
and that the preponderance of men over women in any 
state (except California, whose population was ab- 
normal and exceptional) was too small seriously to 
affect the result. 1 

The discussion in public and in conference of the 
committee of fifteen showed that the states would not 
accept the voting basis and Stevens was compelled to 
surrender it, though he said it was " dear to his heart." 
It would have been practically self-executing and 
would more certainly have accomplished its purpose 
than the provision that was finally adopted, as later 
experience has shown. 

The second alternative, that of prohibiting the states 
from denying suffrage and political rights, on account 
of race to any class of persons within their borders 

1 Globe, January 22, 1866. 



388 THE LIFE OF THADDEUS STEVENS 

ran counter to the wish of the states to regulate their 
own affairs in their own way. Most of the Northern 
states did not permit negroes to vote, some having re- 
peatedly and lately pronounced against it. It was 
futile to ask three-fourths of the states to assent to 
such an amendment. They would not do it. In con- 
sequence of this obvious fact, the congressional lead- 
ers on the Reconstruction Committee resorted to the 
third alternative. They would base representation on 
population, but they would count out the blacks in the 
representation if any of them were counted out in the 
voting. On behalf of the committee, Mr. Conkling, 
of New York, first presented the amendment to the 
House, providing that representatives and direct 
taxes should be apportioned among the several states 
" according to the whole number of persons in each 
state, provided, that whenever the elective franchise 
shall be denied or abridged in any state on account of 
race or color, all individuals of such race or color shall 
be excluded from the basis of representation." If any 
were cut out of voting on account of race, the whole 
race should be omitted in determining the basis of 
representation. 

The principle of this amendment, as Mr. Conkling 
defined it in his very able speech, was that representa- 
tion does not belong to those who have no political 
existence, but to those who have, and it therefore pro- 
vides that whenever any state finds within its borders 
a race of beings unfit for political existence, that race 
shall not be represented in the federal government. 
Every state was left free to extend or withhold the 
elective franchise on such terms as it pleases and this 



THE FIRST CONGRESSIONAL PLAN 

without losing anything in representation if the terms 
are impartial as to all. 1 

On January 31, 1866, Stevens spoke at considerable 
length in support of the amendment in this form. He 
held it to be the right of the states, as it always had 
been, to fix the qualifications for suffrage. He af- 
firmed that the amendment neither granted nor took 
away any privilege from any state in this matter. It 
did, however, punish the abuse of that privilege. If 
Congress should attempt to fix the qualification for 
voters " instead of getting nineteen states, which is 
necessary to ratify this amendment, I venture to say 
you could not get five in this union." ... It says to 
the Slave States, " True, we leave, where it has been 
left for eighty years, the right to fix the elective fran- 
chise, but you must not abuse it; if you do the Con- 
stitution will impose a penalty, and will continue to 
impose it till you have corrected your actions." If a 
state abused the suffrage and kept it from " the only 
loyal people there," the Constitution says to such a 
state, " You shall lose power in the halls of the nation, 
and you shall remain where you are, a shriveled and 
dried up nonentity instead of being the lords of crea- 
tion, as you have been, so far as America is concerned 
for years past." Reduce their power from eighty- 
three to forty-five votes in this hall, and then " let 
them have all the Copperhead assistance they can get, 
liberty will still be triumphant." He preferred this to 
immediate enfranchisement of the negroes and he 
thought " no more severe punishment could be in- 
flicted." For if you make them all voters and let 

1 Colliding, January 22, 1866. 



39o THE LIFE OF THADDEUS STEVENS 

them into this hall not one beneficial act for the benefit 
of the freedmen or for the benefit of the country could 
ever be passed. Their eighty-three votes, " with the 
Representatives of the Five Points ' and other dark 
corners, would be sufficient to overrule the friends of 
progress here, and this nation would be in the hands 
of secessionists at the very next election." 

He would not impose the suffrage on the freedmen 
for some years to come, until Christian men had gone 
among them to teach them the principles and duties 
of citizenship, and until " Congress had done the great 
work of regenerating the Constitution and laws of the 
country according to the principles of the Declaration 
of Independence." He objects to allowing the blacks 
to be counted as fast as they were admitted to the suf- 
frage 2 on the ground that the ex-Confederates would 
admit only their menials and such as they could control. 
But when they were ready to say to all freedmen, 
" You are men and shall be represented," then let 
them come here. " I shall not be here to see them as 
I did their masters, who a few years since drew pis- 
tols and daggers upon me when I was making such a 
speech as this, yet a free people will be here repre- 
sented and they will take care of themselves." 3 

This second cause for which Congress was standing, 
though not so fundamental, was yet like a corollary 
to the first. It was entirely defensible from the point 
of view of the men who had conducted the war for the 
Union. To them, having gone through a terrible 

1 The slums in New York. 

2 According to the proposal offered by Mr. Schenck, of Ohio. 

3 Globe, January 31, 1866. 



THE FIRST CONGRESSIONAL PLAN 391 

struggle against men who had misused their power to 
destroy the unity of the nation, it was very natural to 
ask, " Shall a premium be placed upon rebellion ? " 
The master class of the South, having appealed to the 
sword when they were voted out of power, — should 
these now be allowed, as the result of the war, to come 
back into the Union with more political power than 
they had before? If it be said that this readjustment 
was inspired by a party motive to secure party power, 
it may very well be asked if any political party could 
reasonably be expected to make a voluntary surrender 
of power to its opponents. The prospective combina- 
tion of Southern and Northern Democrats, each wing 
of the party supporting Johnson's reconstruction, was 
apparent. Could the Republicans of the North be ex- 
pected to say to the men of the South, " Come back 
into the Union and you shall enjoy a larger voice and 
a greater weight in the councils of the nation than you 
have ever known " ? On the basis of white population, 
South Carolina was entitled to but two representatives 
in Congress. If all the blacks were counted for rep- 
resentation while the whites exercised all the political 
power, then two white voters in that state would equal 
in political weight at Washington five white voters 
at the North. Was it reasonable to expect that " one 
pardoned rebel of South Carolina who may have 
fought for four years against the government shall, in 
political power, alike on the floor of Congress, and in 
electing a President, outweigh three returned Union 
soldiers" in New Jersey or Ohio? 1 Should 127,000 
white people in New York have but one voice and one 
1 Kelley, in the House, January 22, 1866, Globe, p. 354. 



392 THE LIFE OF THADDEUS STEVENS 

vote in Congress, while the same number in Mississippi 
should have three? Shall twenty-eight votes be cast 
in the Electoral College by the white men of the 
South on behalf of those whom they are unwilling to 
admit to any part or lot in their own government? 
" Shall the death of slavery add two-fifths to the en- 
tire power which slavery had when slavery was liv- 

ing?" 1 

To the Northern mind these questions carried their 
own answers. There was absolutely no defense for 
such proposals. The Union soldiers and the people 
of the North had some opinions upon that subject, and 
it was to the effect that if Congress permitted such an 
injustice, it would be guilty of such recreancy as would 
deserve the severest anathemas that even a vocabu- 
lary as hot as that of Thaddeus Stevens ever made it 
possible for man to utter. Nothing can be plainer 
than that upon that subject Stevens and the radicals 
voiced the public sentiments of the North. Their ac- 
tion responded to the fundamental sense of justice em- 
bedded in the heart of every man. 2 The principle 
that the leaders of the House were thus seeking to 
establish was clear. The government of every politi- 
cal society belonged to its members. If the South 
would enlarge the membership of its political so- 
cieties, it could have the increased power; otherwise 
not, and on that proposition the congressional leaders 

1 Conkling, January 22, 1866, Globe. 

2 This is still true of Northern sentiment, and it is perhaps 
more pronouncedly so than when the passions of war were still 
warm. "At the present day," says Mr. Rhodes, "the strength 
of the argument and the essential justice of the measure will 
at the North be hardly questioned." History of United States, 
Vol. V, p. 609. 




ERT COSTER 



Charles Sumner, 1811-18*! I . 

Senator from Massachusetts. 



THE FIRST CONGRESSIONAL PLAN 393 

were ready to appeal to the country. It was one of 
the mistakes of reconstruction, though it was no fault 
of Thaddeus Stevens, that the congressional policy of 
preventing an unjust apportionment of representation 
and political power was not made permanently effect- 
ive by a constitutional provision that would have been 
self-operative and not dependent upon the coopera- 
tion of the states or the subsequent will of Congress. 
This end could have been accomplished if representa- 
tion had been based as Stevens desired upon the voting 
strength of the respective states. 

Following Stevens' speech on January 31st the 
House passed the amendment by a vote of one hundred 
and twenty to forty-six, sixteen members not voting. 
The resolution was defeated in the Senate on March 
9th, 1 largely through the opposition of Sumner who 
spoke repeatedly, and on one occasion for four hours, 
against it. He arraigned it in excited and exaggerated 
rhetoric, denouncing it as " utterly reprehensible," 
" unpardonable," " worse than the crime against Kan- 
sas or the Fugitive Slave Law," " obnoxious to reason 
and justice." Sumner knew " no language adequate 
to depict its character." Its words were " words of 
defilement." It " violated the national faith," " dis- 
honored the name of the republic," " imperiled the na- 
tional peace." It was " bad as bad could be," " treach- 
erous," " shocking to the moral sense," a " master- 
piece of ingratitude," and a wrong to the freedman 
who had defended the republic in arms. 

The amendment was all this, in Sumner's mind, be- 
cause it did not directly guarantee suffrage to the negro 
1 Yeas, 25; nays, 22; falling considerable short of two-thirds. 



394 THE LIFE OF THADDEUS STEVENS 

by national authority. It fell short of his ideal, his 
theory about the rights of man. He, therefore, held 
it up to execration as another " compromise " and con- 
cession, still permitting the states to oppress the negro, 
admitting the idea of inequality of rights founded on 
race and color, sanctioning " the tyranny of taxation 
without representation," recognizing an oligarchy of 
aristocracy and caste, unduly conceding state rights, 
and fostering the arrogant pretension of a white man's 
government. As a means of inducing the Southerners 
to enfranchise the blacks, it was but a bribe that would 
not prove alluring; and as a means of depriving the 
South of power, it would prove deceptive as there were 
tricks of evasion that would be effective. 

Sumner preferred to base representation on suffrage, 
as Stevens had at first suggested. This, as he con- 
tended, would admit to the Constitution none of the 
base concessions now proposed. He had introduced 
a proposition for the suffrage basis into the previous 
Congress, to be accompanied with a guarantee of civil 
and political equality of all persons before the law. If 
the suffrage basis should transfer power from the 
Eastern to the Western States, as some of his New 
England colleagues had contended, Sumner felt that it 
" were better to suffer wrong ourselves than to do 
wrong to others." 

Sumner's empyrean idealism was more obstructive 
than consistent. Later he was compelled to accept a 
form of this amendment more objectionable than that 
which he was now seeking to talk to death, while he 
showed how sadly lacking he was in that common sense 
and sagacity that leads a statesman to accept progress 



THE FIRST CONGRESSIONAL PLAN 395 

toward his goal though he may not reach the end at 
a single bound. Stevens appears both wiser and nobler 
by comparison in this conflict of plans and purposes 
between these two extreme radical chieftains in Sen- 
ate and House. 1 

After its failure in the Senate, the amendment was 
recast by the committee, and the next time it appeared 
in the House it was in the form of the second section 
of the fourteenth amendment. Stevens reported this 
amendment to the House on April 30, 1866, and on 
May 8th, he spoke at some length on it. He called 
attention to the hard labors the committee had had to 
undergo. He referred to the amendment on repre- 
sentation as it had passed the House in January, and 
had gone to the other end of the Capitol, " there to be 
mortally wounded in the house of its friends." This 
second form of the amendment was not so good as 
the first that Stevens had offered in December. The 
third form that now appeared was still worse. The 
first form, basing representation on votes, would have 
been self -executing and effective. The second form, 
which was sent to its death in the Senate, provided that 
if one of the injured race was excluded, the state was 
to forfeit the right to have any of that race counted 
in representation. That would more likely have has- 
tened the freedmen's enfranchisement. 

1 This conflict between Stevens and Sumner will serve to 
illustrate how the diverse and composite sections of the four- 
teenth amendment came to be incorporated by Congress into 
one article. Probably no one article by itself would have been 
acceptable to a two-thirds majority in Congress and the requi- 
site number of states ; combined, or as a series of measures like 
the parts of the Omnibus Bill of 1850, they were able to secure 
the necessary support. 



396 THE LIFE OF THADDEUS STEVENS 

The section in its third form allowed the states to 
discriminate and to receive credit in representation in 
proportion to the number admitted to the suffrage. 
This Stevens disliked. The language in which he re- 
viewed the struggle must have made Sumner wince, 
as he heard or read the biting words. Stevens recog- 
nized even the last form of the amendment as a short 
step forward, and he was ready to take it. But " the 
large stride," he said, " which we in vain proposed, is 
dead ; the murderers must answer to the suffering race. 
I would not have been the perpetrator. A load of 
misery must sit heavy on their souls." He came upon 
Sumner directly for his agency in the defeat of the 
former amendment, saying that it had been " slaugh- 
tered by a puerile and pedantic criticism, by a perver- 
sion of philological definition which, if when I taught 
school, a lad who had studied Lindley Murray had as- 
sumed, I would have expelled him from the institu- 
tion as unfit to waste education upon. But it is dead, 
and, unless this shall pass, its death has postponed the 
protection of the colored race perhaps for ages. I 
confess my mortification at its defeat. I grieved 
especially because it almost closed the door of hope 
for the amelioration of the condition of the freedmen. 
But men in pursuit of justice must never despair. Let 
us again try and see whether we can not devise some 
way to overcome the united forces of self-righteous 
Republicans and unrighteous Copperheads. It will not 
do for those who for thirty years have fought the 
beasts at Ephesus to be frightened by the fangs of 
modern catamounts." * 

] Globe, May 8, 1866, Vol. 73, p. 8. 



THE FIRST CONGRESSIONAL PLAN 397 

Stevens was a practical legislator. He made no 
parade of his conscience nor heralded his superior vir- 
tue, as Sumner seemed prone to do. He would not, 
any more than Sumner, surrender a principle vital to 
justice. But in an attack on an intrenched enemy, 
he would resort to flanking tactics rather than march 
full in the face of a destructive fire merely to exhibit 
his conscience and his courage. If he could not at 
once get all he desired, he was willing to take all he 
could get. His method was clearly the part of prac- 
tical statesmanship. In this last rampart to which he 
was driven by the repeated changes of the amend- 
ment that was so near to his heart, he was ready still 
to defend the cause for which he was striving. He 
expected that under the clause in its final form, the 
rebel states would be greatly reduced in power. He 
thought that the Southern pride would not long brook 
being reduced to a hopeless minority. It might take 
" two, three, possibly five, years before they conquer 
their prejudices sufficiently to allow their late slaves 
to become their equals at the polls." In the meantime 
the freedmen would become more enlightened and 
more fit for the duties of citizenship. Meanwhile, 
also, these states could be reconstituted and within 
them, " the muniments of freedom may be built high 
and firm ; " and until their states are loyal they can 
have no standing here. 1 

1 Globe, May 8, 1866, p. 2460. Any amount of evidence could 
be adduced to show that the country was much more radical 
than their representatives in Congress, — that that body was 
lagging behind and needed the prod that Stevens was disposed 
to apply to keep it abreast of the people. Wendell Phillips 
wrote to Stevens under date of April 30, 1866 : " I see the 
report of the Reconstruction Committee. It is a fatal and total 



398 THE LIFE OF THADDEUS STEVENS 

The third object that Congress had in view in re- 
jecting the plan of the President, was to exclude from 
office and power the leaders of the Confederacy. The 
congressional leaders, and in this they clearly reflected 
the sentiment of the North, were not satisfied to have 
the ex-Confederates immediately resume the functions 
of government in state or nation. It was felt that 
the Rebellion was a great crime and that its guilty 
leaders should suffer punishment. Indemnity for the 
past, security for the future, — this seemed only a rea- 
sonable demand. The wrong to the negro had been 
righted as far as possible in the provisions described. 
How could the future be made secure, if the very men 
who had committed the wrong were to be restored to 
honor and power? Accordingly, another amendment 
was proposed which was punitive and preventive in 
purpose and character. This section of the fourteenth 
amendment, as first reported by Stevens, 1 provided 
that until July 4, 1870, " all persons who voluntarily 
adhered to the late insurrection, giving it aid and com- 
fort, shall be excluded from the right to vote for rep- 
resentation in Congress," and for President and Vice- 
President. This was a political punishment for a po- 
litical crime. The amendment did not disqualify those 

surrender. The South carries off enough of the victory to en- 
able her to control the nation, mold its policy and shape its 
legislation for a dozen years to come. Twenty years of admir- 
ing trust in your anti-slavery devotion must be my apology for 
urging you to protest against this suicidal step. It is not neces- 
sary. The country is ready for its duty. It only needs leaders. 
Do not let the Republican party desert its post. Or, if that 
must be, let the statesmen, the ' practical statesmen ' of the 
nation, be true to their duty. . . . The people are ready to sup- 
port all necessary measures. With leaders they will open no 
door which does not admit all races." Stevens' Letters. 
1 April 30, 1866. 



THE FIRST CONGRESSIONAL PLAN 399 

who had aided the Confederacy from holding federal 
or state office, nor from voting in state, county, or 
town elections. But for four years they were to be 
barred from taking part in choosing the national rulers. 

Stevens saw that there would be some difference of 
opinion within his own party on this subject. His 
only objection to the provision was that it was too len- 
ient. He would increase its severity by extending the 
time of exclusion to 1870 and by letting it apply to all 
elections, local as well as national. In wonted sar- 
casm he decried such severity as had lately been de- 
nounced upon the " traitors " by a certain executive 
officer, referring to " the late lamented Andrew John- 
son of blessed memory." He regarded the proposed 
punishment as the " mildest ever inflicted on traitors," 
and he deplored " the morbid sensibility sometimes 
called mercy, which affects a few of all classes from 
the priest to the clown, which has more sympathy for 
the murderer on the gallows than for his victim." " I 
hope I have," he said, " a heart as capable of feeling 
for human woe as others. I have long since wished 
that capital punishment were abolished. But I have 
never dreamed that all punishment could be dispensed 
with in human society. Anarchy, treason, and vio- 
lence would reign triumphant." 1 

In the course of the debate on this part of the 
amendment, a division developed on the Republican 
side of the House over the wisdom of this section. 
John A. Bingham, of Ohio, expressed the opinion that 
it brought no strength to the amendment, that it might 
endanger adoption by the states, that it would be dif- 

1 Globe, May 8, 1866. 



400 THE LIFE OF THADDEUS STEVENS 

ficult of execution and would be distasteful to have 
Federal officers controlling elections within the states. 
" Each state," says the Constitution, " shall appoint 
electors in such manners as the legislature thereof 
may direct." It was urged by Bingham that until this 
clause of the Constitution was stricken out, the third 
section of the proposed amendment was useless and 
could never be executed. To retain it would be sim- 
ply to " furnish demogagues a pretext for raising the 
howl that we exclude rebels for four years only that 
we may control the next presidential election." 

Bingham was an ardent supporter of the amend- 
ment as a whole, and the force of his attack on this 
objectionable section, and the source from which it 
came, aroused the fire of Stevens. In closing the de- 
bate he came to a vigorous defense of the proposal, 
which he pronounced " the vital proposition of them 
all." He was not gratified to see " division among 
our friends." If the third section be stricken out he 
said he "cared not the snap of the finger whether the 
amendment be passed or not," for in that case, before 
the amendment can be put into operation, " that side 
of the House will be filled with yelling secessionists 
and hissing Copperheads. Give us the third section 
or give us nothing." 

As to the party motive, he had no compunction nor 
hesitation, — he would rally to his party to save the 
Union. " I do not hesitate to say it at once, — that 
section is there to save or destroy the Union by the 
salvation or destruction of the Union party. Gen- 
tlemen tell us this provision is too strong. ... It is 
too lenient for my hard heart. Not only to 1870 but 



THE FIRST CONGRESSIONAL PLAN 401 

to 18,070 every rebel who shed the blood of loyal men 
should be prevented from exercising any power in this 
government." He believed that the men who had fos- 
tered and led in rebellion deserved humiliation and 
degradation, that none ever deserved it more. He 
would not welcome them back as brothers immediately, 
but they should come as supplicants in sackcloth and 
ashes. He would have a period of probation and for- 
give only when forgiveness had been asked. The 
Great Dispenser of mercy forgives only on those con- 
ditions ; why should the rulers of the republic do more? 
The common jailbirds who had committed such little 
acts as arson and larceny were not half so bloody and 
had not committed half so many crimes as these " reb- 
els," whom Johnson and his supporters were urging 
should be immediately readmitted to seats in Congress. 
" For my part I am willing they shall come in when 
they are ready. But do not, I pray you, admit those 
who have slaughtered half a million of your country- 
men until their clothes are dried, and until they are 
reclad. I do not wish to sit side by side with men 
whose garments smell of the blood of my kindred. 
Gentlemen seem to forget the scenes that were enacted 
here years ago, . . . when the men that you propose 
to admit occupied the other side of the House, when 
the mighty Toombs, with his shaggy locks, headed a 
gang who with shouts of defiance on this floor, ren- 
dered this a hell of legislation. 

" Ah, sir, it was but six short years ago when they 
were here, just before they went out to join the armies 
of Catiline, just before they left this hall. Those of 
you who were here then will remember the scene in 



4 02 THE LIFE OE THADDEUS STEVENS 

which every Southern member, encouraged by their 
allies, came forth in one yelling body, because a speech 
for freedom was being made here, when weapons were 
drawn and Barksdale's bowie-knife gleamed before our 
eyes. Would you have these men back again so soon 
to reenact those scenes ? Wait until I am gone, I pray 
you ; I want not to go through it again." 

When asked by Thayer, of New York, if he thought 
of building a penitentiary large enough to hold eight 
million people, he said he would keep them from the 
halls of Congress by the bayonet if need be, and "if 
they undertake to come here we will shoot them " as 
they deserve, — so incredible and incongruous did it 
seem to him that these men should offer credentials as 
legislators for the nation against which they had been 
so lately in arms. "If the gentleman had remembered 
the scenes twenty years ago, when no man dared to 
speak without risking his life, when but few men did 
do it — for there were cowards in those days as there 
are in these — you would not have found them asking 
to bring these men in, and I only wonder that my 
friend from Ohio (Mr. Bingham) should intimate a 
desire to bring them here." When Bingham protested 
that he had no such desire and that the section under 
discussion did not touch the question of their coming, 
since it disqualified them only as voters, Stevens re- 
joined, — " Then why do you oppose it? If it is going 
to hurt nobody, in God's name let it remain. If it is 
going to hurt anybody it will be the men that deserve 
it." » 

The amendment passed the House in the form pro- 

1 Globe, May 10, 1866. 



THE FIRST CONGRESSIONAL PLAN 403 

posed, on May 10, 1866. 1 Stevens' onslaught had 
pressed down opposition in the House. But when the 
amendment came to the Senate this clause was changed 
to the form, substantially, as it now appears in the 
fourteenth amendment. That is, instead of disqual- 
ifying for suffrage for four years the rank and file of 
those engaged in the Confederacy, it made their lead- 
ers ineligible to office, with the provision that Congress 
by a two-thirds vote of each house might remove such 
disability. 

Such was the final form of the punitive clause pro- 
posed for the fourteenth amendment, the only punish- 
ment proposed by a triumphant government on those 
who for four years of war had attempted the dismem- 
berment of the Union and the overthrow of its power. 2 

A fourth section of the new amendment sought one 
other guarantee for the future, which indicates the 
fourth feature of the congressional plan. As it passed 
the House it guaranteed that neither the United States 
nor any state should ever assume or pay any debt con- 
tracted in aid of the Rebellion, nor any claim for an 
emancipated slave. The Senate added that all such 
debts, obligations and claims should be illegal and void, 
and added a guarantee of the validity of the public 
debt of the United States, including the debts for pen- 
sions and bounties contracted for services in suppress- 
ing the Rebellion. The Senate also added to the first 
section the well-known definition of citizenship, — that 
" all persons born or naturalized in the United States, 

1 By a vote of 128 to 37; 19 members not voting. 

2 " It is difficult to see how the Confederate leaders could 
have been required to suffer less and have been rebuked at all 
for their acts." Burgess, Reconstruction and the Constitution. 



404 THE LIFE OF THADDEUS STEVENS 

and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of 
the state wherein they reside." 

Such was the congressional plan, — the fourteenth 
amendment added to the conditions that Johnson had 
imposed. It was on these four guarantees, to be in- 
corporated into the fundamental law of the land, that 
Congress joined issue with the President, — civil rights 
to all citizens of the republic, just equality of repre- 
sentation, protection against claims founded in rebel- 
lion, and exclusion from positions of public trust of 
certain leaders of those who had proved hostile to the 
Union. Like all great measures of government that 
emerge from constitutional struggles the fourteenth 
amendment was a compromise between conflicting- 
ideas, — an adjustment obtained by mutual concessions 
among the radical and conservative dispositions repre- 
sented in the Committee. The plan gave the ballot to 
no negro and took it from no white man who would 
swear to support the Constitution. It carried no 
reprisals, no executions, no exile, no imprisonment, no 
confiscation of property. It guaranteed to the South- 
ern States control of their own local affairs subject 
to the great democratic law of equal rights for all and 
special privileges for none. There was not a clause 
in the proposed amendment that was not fully justified 
by the circumstances of the times, and the historian of 
the period but expresses the common sense of men 
when he describes it as " marked by even-handed jus- 
tice." 1 It is reasonably certain, if these terms of re- 
union had been accepted in as reasonable and conserva- 
tive a spirit as that in which they were offered, that 
1 Rhodes, History of the United States, Vol. V., p. 609. 






THE FIRST CONGRESSIONAL PLAN 405 

Congress would not have advanced to the more radical 
and drastic policy that was subsequently imposed. Re- 
:onstruction could have been accomplished on the basis 
of the fourteenth amendment. The races in the South 

light then have been spared the bitter alienation that 
followed, and both the North and South might have 
been saved much of the failure, humiliation, and suffer- 
ing that came from later reconstruction experiences. 

"he responsibility for the outcome by no means lies 

molly with the Republican party of the North. 1 
[ohnson and his Democratic and conservative support- 
ers by their partisan resistance to this reasonable basis 
of adjustment, misled the South, and together these 
elements played directly into the hands of Stevens and 
the radicals. 

The resentful and misguided conduct of the South 
in answer to the terms proposed was an important 
factor in promoting radical control in Congress and 
in the public opinion of the North. The same vindic- 
tive and hateful spirit for which Thaddeus Stevens has 
been so constantly arraigned, vented itself against him 

md his coadjutors in this struggle. That spirit was 
certainly as dominant in the South as in the North and 
both sections must share alike the responsibility for its 
unhappy results. The vital and unfortunate fact was 
that it was in this passionate spirit of war that an ap- 
peal was made to the people on this, one of the great- 
est issues of civil government ever presented to the 
American electorate. 
1 Consider Blaine, II, p. 266. 



CHAPTER XVI 

THE APPEAL TO THE PEOPLE 

' I V HE issue was now joined. The decision between 
-*■ the two plans, that of the President and that of 
Congress, was to be left with the people. Both parties 
to the contest prepared for the referendum. For once 
in our history, upon a dissolution of Congress, the Ex- 
ecutive was to appeal to the electorate against the Leg- 
islative body that refused to sustain him. The people 
were to break the deadlock between the two depart- 
ments of their government. Would the people in the 
election of a new Congress serve notice that that body 
should retrace its steps, undo what it had done, and 
proceed to sustain the President in restoring the union 
of the states on the basis that he had proposed? Or, 
would the popular mandate direct Congress to go ahead 
with the work, disregard the " rights " of the " states " 
that Johnson had set up and insist upon the addi- 
tional guarantees that Congress had proposed ? 

Fortunately, in the presentation of the issue there 
could be no confusion in the minds of the voters. 
There were no side issues or minor questions to dis- 
tract their attention. The issue was clear, simple, 
overshadowing. Will you sustain Congress or will 
you elect a Congress that will sustain the President? 
"If the result showed a majority in the next Congress 

406 



THE APPEAL TO THE PEOPLE 407 

against the President, his policy would be doomed; if 
the majority proved to be with him, the policy of Con- 
gress would be doomed." * It was a fortunate situa- 
tion, conducive to political education and to vigor and 
efficiency in government. In such a case the appeal 
may be made with force and a verdict given that no 
man may doubt. 

The popular referendum on reconstruction made 
the election of 1866 unique in our political history. 
It was an " off year "; no President and but few Gov- 
ernors were to be elected, and usually in such years 
there is apathy or a waning interest in politics and elec- 
tions. But probably no political stakes were ever more 
hotly contested and no campaign ever excited a livelier 
interest than the struggle over the congressional elec- 
tions in the summer and fall of 1866. The contest 
gave rise to the congressional campaign committee to 
organize and direct the righting for the congressional 
cause within the states. 2 

Though there were no national nominations to be 
made there were not fewer than four national con- 
ventions assembled for the purpose of appealing to the 
people and creating and influencing public sentiment. 
Each side held a " Soldiers and Sailors Convention " 
to appeal for support, and each held a political conven- 
tion to set forth the platform and principles of its ap- 
peal. The first of these conventions was called by the 
supporters of the President, led by Seward, Weed, and 

1 W. A. Dunning, Reconstruction, p. 71. 

2 This party agency has continued from that day to this as a 
permanent part of the party machine to look out for the in- 
terest of the party cause in the contested congressional dis- 
tricts. 



408 THE LIFE OF THADDEUS STEVENS 

Raymond, and was known as the " National Union " 
Convention. It met at Philadelphia, on August 14th. 
There was representation from every state of the 
Union, South as well as North. The convention was 
to speak for a restored Union, and to voice a demand 
for a speedy return of the Southern States to full har- 
mony and privilege with their sister states, a return 
that was to mark a happy reunion between the North 
and the South. Former secessionists who had pro- 
voked the war, Northern Democrats who had opposed 
the war, and old time Republicans, who had prosecuted 
the war, were meeting in an effort to unite North and 
South in support of the President's policy. To typify 
the national and united character of the gathering the 
Northern and Southern delegates walked into the wig- 
wam arm in arm. President Johnson later described 
how deeply he was moved on receiving the telegram 
telling him that when Mr. Orr, of South Carolina, and 
General Couch, of Massachusetts, entered together, 
" arm in arm " at the head of their delegations, " every 
eye was suffused with tears." The congressional 
leaders were not slow to turn this tearful and dramatic 
scene into ridicule, and their speakers and papers were 
soon describing the Philadelphia " Wigwam " as 
" Noah's Ark," into which " the animals entered two 
by two, the elephant and the kangaroo, of clean beasts 
and of beasts that are not clean, and of fowls and of 
every thing that creepeth upon the earth." So far as 
we know, this analogy has not been attributed to Stev- 
ens, but it was quite Stevenesque and in harmony with 
his style. 

The congressional party also charged that in the 



THE APPEAL TO THE PEOPLE 409 

r Arm-in-Arm " Convention the Southern delegates 
were not permitted to speak out their true sentiments 
and purposes. Thomas Nast, the popular cartoonist 
of Harper's Weekly, represented the President of the 
convention, Senator Doolittle, of Wisconsin, as pad- 
locking the mouths of the ex-Confederates lest their 
honest and candid speech might reveal their real feel- 
ing toward the f reedmen and Union men in the South 
and thus disturb the " unbroken harmony " that the 
convention was appointed to proclaim between the 
sections. 1 

A Congressional or Republican Convention, meeting 
early in September, was presided over by ex-Attorney 
General Speed, lately a member of Johnson's Cabinet, 
who, with others, wished no longer to be responsible 
for the opposition of the administration to the four- 
teenth amendment. The convention arraigned the 
President's plan, and denounced the President as 
"traitor to his party" and "a friend of the rebels," 
and it urged the fourteenth amendment as the par- 
amount issue of the campaign, the adoption of which 
was regarded as essential to peace and reunion. 

Johnson himself entered the campaign for his cause. 
To the committee that brought him a report of the 
Philadelphia convention, he spoke of Congress with 
characteristic bad taste, as " a body called, or which as- 
sumes to be, the Congress of the United States, while, 
in fact, it is a Congress of only a part of the states, 
hanging, as it were, upon the verge of the govern- 
ment." Such an utterance gave the intimation of a 
danger that the country might have to confront. It 

1 Rhodes, V, p. 616. 



410 THE LIFE OF THADDEUS STEVENS 

gave some ground for fear that if Johnson's plan found 
sufficient support in the Northern and Border States, 
he might recognize the representation from these 
states who supported him, together with the repre- 
sentation from the South for whom he was demanding 
seats in Congress, as the Congress of the United States, 
and attempt to use his military power to turn Thad- 
deus Stevens' rump of a Congress out of doors. In 
his later speeches Johnson repeatedly referred to his 
lifelong devotion to the Constitution as the chief re- 
straining influence between the country and himself as 
a dictator. The danger may not have been a serious 
one, but it had a bearing upon the election. 

But the worst of Johnson was yet to come. He 
started through the country on his notable " swing 
around the circle," and by his undignified and unseemly 
speeches, in which he bandied coarse epithets with the 
crowd, he injured his cause and disgraced his office. 
At Cleveland, as he appeared on the balcony of a hotel 
to speak to the people, he was too drunk to speak with 
sense, and his high office was brought to " the lowest 
depth of degradation." * He referred to the radical 
Congress as having begun another rebellion and as 
seeking to " break up the government." He declared 
(and thoroughly proved it by his conduct) that he 
" cared not for dignity." " I would ask you why not 
hang Thaddeus Stevens and Wendell Phillips? I tell 
you, my countrymen, I have been righting the South, 
and they have been whipped and crushed and they ac- 
knowledge their defeat and accept the terms of the 
Constitution ; and now as I go round the circle, having 

1 Rhodes, V, p. 618. 



THE APPEAL TO THE PEOPLE 411 

fought traitors at the South, I am prepared to fight 
traitors at the North. . . . He who is opposed to the 
reunion of the states is as great a traitor as Jeff Davis 
or Wendell Phillips," and " though the powers of hell 
and Thaddeus Stevens and his gang were by, they 
could not turn me from my purpose." 1 If he had 
played the part of Judas, as his enemies had charged, 
he wanted to know who had been the Christ that he 
had played Judas with. " Was it Thaddeus Stevens ? 
Was it Wendell Phillips? Was it Charles Sumner? " 
In vituperative language that would have disgraced a 
common stump-speaker he spoke of " the nefarious 
and diabolical policy " of these leaders. 2 Upon John- 
son's return to Washington, it was said of him that 
no political orator in our history ever accomplished 
so much for his opponents as Johnson did in this fort- 
night of speaking. 3 

Anti-negro riots in the South in the summer of 1866 
conspired with this unhappy exposure of Johnson and 
his cause to promote the success of the congressional 
party. In the early days of May there had been riots 
at Memphis in which twenty-four negroes had been 
killed. On July 30th, two days after Congress ad- 
journed for the summer, a bloody " riot " occurred in 
New Orleans, at a political convention in which the 
negroes were attempting to take part. Thirty-seven 
negroes and white assailants were killed and over one 
hundred were wounded. The ex-Confederate police 
had not attempted to restrain the murderous whites. 

1 Speech at Cleveland, Sept. 3, 1866, McPherson, p. 135. 

2 Speech at St. Louis, Sept. 8, 1866, McPherson's Political 
Manual, 1866. 

3 New York Nation, Sept. 27, 1866, cited by Rhodes, V, p. 620. 



4 i2 THE LIFE OF THADDEUS STEVENS 

General Sheridan telegraphed to Grant that it was 
" not a riot but a massacre." Only one white man lost 
his life in this affair. The congressional leaders said 
that this was the way freedmen would be treated under 
Johnson's reconstructed governments, that negroes 
could not obtain the equal protection of the laws; and 
they charged that the life and property of Union men 
in the South were unsafe and that at least a thousand 
had been murdered within the year. 

It is obvious that the congressional cause was des- 
tined to win by sheer default of the opposition. But 
the cause of Congress was not lacking in positive and 
constructive support. That cause was presented to the 
country in one of the most notable documents of the 
reconstruction era. This was the majority report of 
the Reconstruction Committee, submitted to the two 
houses of Congress after the passage of the amend- 
ment and not long before the adjournment for the 
summer recess. 1 Congress ordered to be printed sev- 
eral thousand copies of this report. It presented an 
able statement of the congressional case and it proved 
to be an effective campaign document. Its author- 
ship has been attributed to Fessenden but like the 
fourteenth amendment, it was no doubt a composite 
document. No one can read it without recognizing in 
all its parts the impress and political lineaments of 
Thaddeus Stevens. It describes Johnson's recon- 
structed governments merely as temporary, as intima- 
tions of the Commander-in-chief that he would with- 
draw military rule in proportion as the people showed 
a disposition to preserve order, to establish govern- 

1 June [8, 1866. 



THE APPEAL TO THE PEOPLE 413 

lents denoting loyalty to the Union and to exhibit a 
willingness to return to their allegiance, leaving it with 
le law-making power to fix the terms of their final 
restoration to their rights and privileges in the Union, 
mere was no evidence of loyalty in those who had 
)articipated in making these new state governments, 
neir elections " had resulted in the defeat of candi- 
lates who had been true to the Union, and in the elec- 
tion of notorious and unpardoned rebels who made no 
secret of their hostility to the government and people 
of the United States. Was it safe to admit such men 
at once to a full participation in the government they 
had fought four years to destroy ? They had yielded 
after four years of malignant war only because they 
could no longer resist. Within the limits of humanity 
the conquered rebels were at the mercy of the conquer- 
ors. That a government thus outraged had a perfect 
right to exact indemnity for the injuries done and se- 
curity against the recurrence of such outrages in the 
future would seem too clear for dispute. The nature 
of the security, the proof of allegiance, the time to 
elapse before the restoration of rights and privileges, 
— these are matters for the law-making power to de- 
cide. To apply the theory of immediate restoration 
as if the war were to count for nothing, was to leave 
the government of the United States powerless for its 
own protection, and " flagrant rebellion carried to the 
extreme of civil war, would then be but a pastime 
which any state may play at, not only certain that it 
can lose nothing in any event, but may even be the 
gainer by defeat. If rebellion succeeds it accomplishes 
its purpose and destroys the government. If it fails 



4 i4 THE LIFE OF THADDEUS STEVENS 

the war has been barren of results and the battle may 
still be fought out in the legislative halls of the coun- 
try. Treason defeated in the field has only to take 
possession of Congress and the Cabinet." The theory 
that the late Confederate States are still states in the 
Union was "a profitless abstraction, about which so 
many words had been wasted. It is more than idle, 
it is mockery to contend that a people who have thrown 
off their allegiance, destroyed the local government 
which bound their states to the Union, defied its author- 
ity, refused to execute its laws, and abrogated every 
provision which gave them political rights within the 
Union, still retain, through all, the perfect and entire 
right to resume at their own will and pleasure all their 
privileges within the Union, and especially to partici- 
pate in its government and to control the conduct of its 
affairs. To admit such a principle for one moment 
would be to declare that treason is always master and 
loyalty a blunder." The report asserted that the Con- 
stitution acts, not upon the states, but upon the peo- 
ple. The people can not escape its authority, but the 
states, through the act of their people, may cease to 
exist in an organized form, and thus dissolve their 
political relations with the United States. 

The paper then reviews and restates with force the 
cause for which Congress stood : that the f reedmen 
should be protected; that rebellion should not result 
in increased political power to the rebellious states; 
that in freeing the slaves political advantage should not 
come to their former masters, who had fought against 
the Union while it was withheld from those who had 
fought for it ; that political power should be possessed 



THE APPEAL TO THE PEOPLE 415 

in all the states exactly in proportion as the right of 
suffrage should be granted, without distinction of color 
or race. A forcible picture was drawn of the unhappy 
conditions in the South and of the disunion and dis- 
loyal disposition of the people, where without the 
freedmen's bureau " the colored people would not be 
permitted to labor at fair prices and where Union men 
though not of Northern origin, without the protection 
of the troops, would be obliged to abandon their 
homes." The deep-seated prejudice against persons 
of color would prevent their ever being placed on 
terms of civil equality, if left to the tender mercies of 
the Johnson governments. Intense hostility to the 
Union and intense love for the late Confederacy was 
decisive. Northern men going South are detested 
and proscribed while " Southern men who adhered to 
the Union are bitterly hated and relentlessly perse- 
cuted." What government would leave the protec- (. 
tion of its defenders to the mercy of its foes? 

The conciliatory measures of our government have 
not been met half-way. " The bitterness and defiance 
exhibited toward the United States under such cir- 
cumstances is without a parallel in the history of the 
world. In return for our leniency we receive only an 
insulting denial of our authority. In return for our 
kind desire for the resumption of fraternal relations 
we receive only an insolent assumption of rights and 
privileges long since forfeited." 

The claim that these states are entitled as a matter 
of right to immediate and unconditional representa- 
tion in Congress and that to exclude their Senators and 
Represenatives is oppressive and unjust, as well as un- 



4 i6 THE LIFE OF THADDEUS STEVENS 

wise and impolitic, — in opposition to that claim the 
committee set forth a plain statement of familiar 
facts: That the seats of these Senators and Represen- 
tatives were voluntarily vacated in 1861, by the direc- 
tion of their states. This was done as a hostile act 
against the United States government with an avowed 
intent to overthrow that government and to form an- 
other. To that end a four-years' war was levied by 
sea and land " within which period the rebel army be- 
sieged the national capital, invaded the loyal states, 
burned their towns and cities, destroyed more than 
250,000 loyal soldiers, and imposed an increased na- 
tional burden of not less than $3,500,000,000." Dur- 
ing this war the mass of these people were insurgents, 
rebels, traitors, and all of them occupied the political, 
legal and practical relations of enemies of the United 
States. The war obliterated every vestige of state 
and Confederate government and their people are re- 
duced to the condition of enemies conquered in war, 
entitled only by public law to such rights, privileges, 
and conditions as might be vouchsafed by the con- 
queror." x Against such rebellions in the future there 
must be guarantees satisfactory to the government 
against which this gigantic Rebellion was directed. 

The question, then, before the country is whether 
conquered enemies have the right and shall be permit- 
ted at their own terms to participate in making laws 
for their conquerors; whether conquered rebels may 
change their theater of operations from the battle-field 
where they were defeated and overthrown, to the halls 

1 Report of Majority Committee on Reconstruction. Mc- 
Pherson's Reconstruction. 



THE APPEAL TO THE PEOPLE 417 

of Congress, and through their representatives seize 
upon the government which they fought to destroy ; 
whether the national treasury, the army of the nation, 
its navy, its forts and arsenals, its whole civil admin- 
istration, its credit, its pensioners, the widows and or- 
phans of those who perished in the war, the public 
honor, peace, safety, — shall all be turned over to its 
recent enemies without delay, and without imposing 
such conditions as, in the opinion of Congress, the se- 
curity of the country and its institutions may demand. 
The history of mankind exhibits no example of such 
madness and folly. The instinct of self-preservation 
protests against it. Surrender in the field would have 
been less disastrous, for new armies could have been 
raised, new battles fought and the government would 
have been saved. The anti-coercive policy which, un- 
der the pretext of avoiding bloodshed, allowed the Re- 
bellion to take form and gather force, would be sur- 
passed in infamy by the matchless wickedness that 
would now surrender the halls of Congress to those 
so recently in rebellion until proper precautions shall 
have been taken to secure the national faith and the 
national safety. 1 

Congress therefore appealed to the country that be- 
fore representation should be allowed to the late Con- 
federate States there should be adequate security for fu- 
ture peace and safety, by such changes in the organic 
law as shall determine the civil rights and privileges of 
all citizens in all parts of the republic, shall place rep- 
resentation upon an equitable basis, shall fix a stigma 
upon treason, and protect the loyal people of the 

1 Report of Reconstruction Committee, XLcPherson. 



418 THE LIFE OF THADDEUS STEVENS 

United States against future claims for the expenses 
incurred in support of the Rebellion and for manu- 
mitted slaves, — that peace and harmony may be re- 
stored to the country and our republican institutions 
placed on a stable foundation. 1 

Stevens' chief part in this campaign was played be- 
fore the adjournment of Congress by his getting before 
the country a more radical proposal and a powerful 
speech in its support. Stevens accepted and supported 
the fourteenth amendment without reservation, but he 
was by no means satisfied with it as a basis of re- 
union. He wanted more in the way of securities and 
punishments. It has been said that he no sooner se- 
cured one set of conditions than he began to contrive 
for others. 2 At any rate, he sought to prevent Con- 
gress from definitely committing itself to the condi- 
tions proposed, as if they were final and complete. 
When Stevens submitted to the House the four guar- 
antees of the fourteenth amendment, April 30, 1866, 
he submitted a bill under instruction from the Joint 
Committee on Reconstruction. This provided that 
whenever these guarantees had " become a part of 
the Constitution of the United States and any state 
lately in rebellion shall have ratified the same and 
shall have modified its constitution and laws in con- 
formity therewith, the Senators and Representatives 
from such states may be duly admitted to Congress." 
Stevens was decidedly opposed to the proposition. 
He regarded it as the result of confused and ab- 
surd error. He scorned the idea that these rebel 
communities, the " defunct states," were to be counted 

1 Report of Committee. - Rhodes, V, p. 609. 



THE APPEAL TO THE PEOPLE 419 

or consulted in adopting the amendment. They had 
no right to be considered. He disapproved of Secre- 
tary Seward's policy of submitting the amendment to 
the Southern States, thus recognizing their statehood. 
When nineteen of the loyal states had ratified the 
amendment (it would have required twenty-seven if 
the Southern States were to be counted), Stevens 
would have Congress consider it as adopted and bind- 
ing. Then the " states " lately in rebellion when they 
were made ready, could do as they chose, come in, or 
stay out under the new and amended Constitution 
which would be binding in all the states alike. 

The highest authorities to-day will recognize this as 
both good public law and sound political science. It 
would have avoided giving the opportunity to the 
Southern States to reject the amendment and it would 
have avoided the inconsistency on the part of Congress 
of appearing to regard the Southern communities as 
states for the amending purposes while they were not 
recognized as states for purposes of representation. 
If Congress had adopted outright Stevens' theory on 
this point, it would have been both clearer in its po- 
litical thinking and more consistent in its political con- 
duct. Stevens was by no means alone in the radical 
desire to exact other terms, especially to secure man- 
hood suffrage among all citizens regardless of race or 
color, 1 and the radicals were able, through his leader- 
ship, to bring about the adjournment for the summer 
without an official promise that no other terms would 

1 See amendment proposed by Boutwell, of Massachusetts, 
May 1st; Wilson, of Iowa, May 15th, and Kelley, of Pennsyl- 
vania, June nth, Globe. 



4 20 THE LIFE OF THADDEUS STEVENS 

be imposed. He was ready to bide his time, and it was 
for time that he was now playing. He believed that 
the country was more radical than Congress in its atti- 
tude toward reconstruction. Perhaps he was relying 
on the obstructive and mole-sighted policy of his op- 
ponents as a means of bringing his Republican col- 
leagues in Congress up to what he considered the 
proper standard. At any rate he was not willing to 
give up the field without one more effort. 

On the day of adjournment, before the case was 
sent to the jury, Stevens submitted a plan in the form 
of a bill that contained what he considered suitable 
terms and process of reconstruction. The Southern 
States were to be regarded as having forfeited their 
rights and were to be reinstated only through the action 
of Congress. The Johnson governments were to be 
recognized de facto for municipal purposes only, till 
such changes were made as were necessary to set up 
valid state governments. The President might direct 
conventions to be called to form legitimate constitu- 
tions, to be submitted to a vote of the people, and to 
be ratified by a majority of the legal voters. All male 
citizens above the age of twenty-one were to be legal 
voters, and to be eligible to seats in the convention. 
All persons who held office, civil or military, under the 
so-called Confederate government, or who had sworn 
allegiance to said government, were declared to have 
forfeited their citizenship and to have renounced their 
allegiance to the United States, and should not be en- 
titled to vote or hold office till three years after they 
had filed an expression of desire to be reinvested with 
civic rights, and had sworn allegiance to the United 



THE APPEAL TO THE PEOPLE 421 

States and renounced their allegiance to all other gov- 
ernments. All laws should be impartial, without re- 
gard to race or color, and no constitution should be 
presented to Congress denying equality of citizenship ; 
and if this guarantee were ever altered or denied, the 
state should lose its representation in Congress ; — that 
whenever a constitution complying with these condi- 
tions was presented to Congress the state might be 
restored as a member of the Union. p--' 

In supporting these proposals Stevens acknowledged 
some discouragements, but he said he would not be 
weary in well-doing and he would make one more, per- 
haps an expiring, effort to do something that might 
be useful to his fellow men. When he reflected " with 
how few acts of justice, with how few wise enact- 
ments most of us seem content to close our labors 
and disperse to the periphery of the nation in search of 
tool shades, purling trout streams, and to see our bulls 
and beeves," he could not feel that Congress had done 
anything " worthy of its glorious opportunity, worthy 
of its duty to the immortal beings whose destinies for 
good or evil, for weal or woe, it holds in its hands." * 
He claimed no right to reproach others, especially when 
he considered his own life, " too much of which has 
been spent in idleness or frivolous amusement ; " and 
while he found himself " almost ready to yield before 
every man is secured equal rights and impartial priv- 
ileges, I can not avoid feeling humbled, I can not es- 
cape the pangs of self-condemnation." We have but 
poor results of the labors of an assembly clothed with 
the sovereignty of the republic. Congress had done 

1 Globe, July 28, 1866. 



422 THE LIFE OF. THADDEUS STEVENS 

something to aid the white man, if he chose, to pro- 
tect the poor of all races and colors. " But nothing 
has been done to enable any but the white man to pro- 
tect himself. ... In a peaceful well-governed repub- 
lic the only protection consists in the right to partici- 
pate in the government. . . . They must have the bal- 
lot, or they will continue, virtually, to be slaves ; they 
will be the servants and tools of the rich. But give 
them political power and they will find friends who 
will recognize their manhood. Republics must stand 
upon the basis of universal suffrage. All who choose 
to deal fairly by all men may thus be represented in 
this body in the next Congress. Those who do not 
choose to give equal rights to all men will, with my 
consent, never enter this hall except as delegates. . . . 
No man of common sense and common honesty pre- 
tends that the present governments at the South have 
any features of the legitimate governments. Their old 
constitutions were not of their own choice, but were 
imposed in the midst of arms, when the laws were si- 
lent, by a military ruler playing the part of a mighty 
conqueror. Not one of their organic laws was ever 
submitted to the judgment of the people. Let us now 
authorize the outlawed states to become republican 
by freely forming their constitutions by the action of 
all their freemen. Then loyal men will be protected. 
They are now proscribed without regard to color. If 
we leave the colored race without the protection o.f the 
ballot box they will be the mere serfs and victims of 
their former masters." l 

1 These quotations contain not the exact and full form of 
words, but the essence of Stevens' speech of July 2S, i866- 



THE APPEAL TO THE PEOPLE 423 

Stevens affirmed that there was an objection to in- 
serting a provision in the Constitution for equal man- 
hood suffrage that did not apply to such a bill as he 
was proposing. In the Constitution it would operate 
in all the states alike, and in many of the Free States 
Stevens recognized " a deep-seated prejudice, the off- 
spring of ignorance and habit, that obstructed the 
cause of justice." In Copperhead States where jus- 
tice to the colored race has no domicile, and in states 
nearly balanced, such reform was thought to be im- 
practicable at present. Those states had done nothing 
to forfeit their rights and authorize the nation to im- 
pose such new conditions. To deprive a few of the 
elective franchise there, though a great wrong, was 
not thought to be dangerous or intolerable. But in the 
rebel states the conditions were different. There the 
concentration of the whole political power in the hands 
of a few tyrannical and disloyal men has shown itself 
dangerous to liberty, and unless restrained must again 
soon produce bloody insurrections. Their right to 
dictate the terms of their participation in national af- 
fairs has been forfeited. To that men of all parties 
agree — " whether Republicans, Copperheads, Apos- 
tates, or that unamiable, hermaphrodite race called 
Conservatives." As the conditions of readjustment 
are to be fixed by the government none can deem it 
too severe if we put the loyal freedmen on an equal 
footing at the polls with the disloyal white men. 

When these people again become states, Congress 
can not alter or amend their constitutions. The only 
way to reach the end in view is by enabling acts, and 
as Congress can dictate any mode of reconstruction it 



424 THE LIFE OF THADDEUS STEVENS 

deems best, it may pass such acts authorizing these out- 
lawed districts to form republican state governments 
fit to partake in the government of the nation. He 
would exclude none from the government " but the 
most guilty rebels," and that was necessary " in order 
to enable the loyal men to live in the land of their birth ; 
otherwise the proud persecuting rebels will exile them 
from their native land. 

" When this is done we shall have done but partial 
justice to the descendants of an oppressed race. God 
may yet visit us with further punishments. Certainly 
we deserve it. Why have we not given them home- 
steads? Their rebel masters owe it to them. As to 
the punishment proposed, they may thank the tender 
mercy of Congress that it is so light. 

" I have done in this matter," he concluded, " what 
I deemed best for humanity. ... I know it is easy to 
protect the interests of the rich and powerful, but it 
is a great labor to guard the rights of the poor and 
downtrodden; it is the eternal labor of Sisyphus for- 
ever to be renewed. I know how unprofitable is all 
such toil. But he who is in earnest does not heed 
these things. I know, too, what effect it has on per- 
sonal popularity. But if I may be indulged in a little 
egotism, I will say that if there be anything for which 
I have entire indifference, perhaps I may say contempt, 
it is that public opinion which is founded on popular 
clamor. 

" In this, perhaps my final action on this great ques- 
tion, upon a careful review, I can see nothing in my 
political course, especially in regard to tiuman freedom, 
which I could wish to have expunged or changed. I 



THE APPEAL TO THE PEOPLE 425 

believe that we must all account hereafter for deeds 
done in the body, and that political deeds will be among 
these accounts. I desire to take to the bar of that final 
settlement the record which I shall this day make on 
the great question of human rights. While I am sure 
it will not make atonement for half my errors, I hope 
it will be some palliation. 

" Are there any who will venture to take the list, 
with their negative seal upon it, and will dare to unroll 
it before that stern Judge who is the Father of the im- 
mortal beings whom they have been trampling under 
foot, and whose souls they have been crushing out? " * 

" This speech," says Mr. McCall, " made a profound 
impression, having the tone of a farewell message." 2 
It was effective campaign material for the radical cause, 
an appeal to the country that no backward step should 
be taken. In the campaign proper the state of Stevens' 
health did not permit him to take part. At the close of 
the session he was all but worn out by labors and dis- 
ease. His physician directed him to take absolute rest, 
neither to think nor speak nor read, if he would regain 
his strength by the next session of Congress. John- 
son's " swing around the circle " tempted him from his 
rest. In an impromptu speech to his constituents just 
before the election, he said he had obeyed the injunc- 
tion of his physician almost literally. He had made 
but one speech, at Bedford, and as to reading, he had 
amused himself with only " a little light frivolous read- 
ing. For instance, there was a serial account from 
day to day of a very remarkable circus that traveled 
through the country from Washington to Chicago and 

1 Globe, July 28, 1866. - Life of Stevens. 



426 THE LIFE OF. THADDEUS STEVENS 

St. Louis, and from Louisville back to Washington. 
I read that with some interest, expecting to see in so 
celebrated an establishment, — one which from its 
heralding was to beat Dan Rice and all the old cir- 
cuses that ever went forth, — I expected great wit from 
the celebrated character of its clowns. [Laughter.]. 
They were well provided with clowns; instead of one, 
there were two. One of these clowns was high in of- 
fice and somewhat advanced in years ; the other was a 
little less advanced in office, but older in years. They 
started out with a very respectable stock company. In 
order to attract attention they took with them, for in- 
stance, a celebrated general; they took with them an 
eminent naval officer, and they chained him to the rig- 
ging so that he could not get away, though he tried to 
do so once or twice. But the circus went on all the 
time, — sometimes one clown performing and some- 
times the other. For instance, the younger clown told 
them, in the language of the ancient heroes who trod 
the stage, that he had it in his power, if ' he chose, to 
be a dictator.' The elder clown pointed to the other 
one, and said to the people, ' Will you take him for 
President or will you take him for King?' [Laugh- 
ter.] He left you but one alternative. You are 
obliged to take him for one or the other, either for 
President or King, if ' My policy ' prevails. 

" I am not following them all round. I shall not 
describe to you how sometimes they cut outside the 
circle, and entered into street broils with common 
blackguards ; how they fought at Cleveland and In- 
dianapolis. But, coming round, they told you, or one 
of them did, that he had been every thing but one. 



THE APPEAL TO THE PEOPLE 427 

He had been a tailor, — I think he did not say drunken 
tailor, — no, he had been a tailor. [Laughter.] He 
had been a constable. [Laughter.] He had been city- 
alderman. [Laughter.] He had been in the legisla- 
ture. God help that legislature ! [Great merriment.] 
He had been in Congress ; and now he was President. 
He had been everything but one, — he had never been 
a hangman, and he asked leave to hang Thad Stevens." 
[Laughter.] 

The speech at Bedford, referred to above, was one 
of more serious purpose and more important in con- 
tent. It was made on September 4, 1866, and is 
well worth attention and preservation. In that speech 
Stevens reviewed the difficulties of Congress for the 
five years just passed, the doubts and difficulties in the 
way when " their elected chief apostatized." He as- 
serted that the work of reconstruction would have 
been easy if the Executive had confined himself to his 
proper sphere, since " the rebels were submissive and 
asked only to be allowed their forfeited lives." He 
retraced Johnson's usurpations, approving Justice Ruf- 
fin, of North Carolina, in his denunciation of the Presi- 
dent's dictating what the Southern States should do. 
Not one of these governments, said Ruffin, had a law- 
ful government. Stevens arraigned Johnson for using 
the patronage of office to corrupt the people, and he 
spoke with special fierceness against the doctrine set 
up by Raymond, editor of the New York Times, for 
" the President's squad," that the " awful horrors and 
losses and wrongs of the war had made no difference 
in the constitutions or institutions of the South ; and 
that the nation had no power, in the South, territorial 



428 THE LIFE OF THADDEUS STEVENS 

or civil, not possessed before the war broke out." 
This idea Stevens denounced as " a strange, wild and 
wicked doctrine." " Was there ever before a human 
brain frenzied enough to engender such folly, or a hu- 
man front brazen enough to utter it? The war had 
changed everything, — old treaties and leagues had 
ceased. They cry out against confiscation for crime 
as if it were inhuman. God willing, I shall try it again 
and see if they do not pay part of the cost and damages 
of the war before they help to make our laws." 

But the great issue, as he recognized it, was that of 
negro rights. He would not dodge, nor flinch from 
the Copperhead cry, " Nigger, Nigger, Nigger ! 
Down with the Nigger party, we are the White Man's 
party, we are urged to save the daughters of the whites 
from negro husbands ! " " These unanswerable argu- 
ments," said Stevens, " will be uttered by unprincipled 
demagogues possessed of some cunning but no con- 
science, and they will ring in every low barroom and 
be printed in every blackguard sheet throughout the 
land." 

Stevens did not shrink from the issue presented by 
the claims of the negroes, and he announced for the 
Republicans the doctrine of equal rights, — the im- 
mortal democratic creed which asserts that every hu- 
man being should have equality before the law; that 
" the laws should apply alike to every mortal, Ameri- 
ican, Irish, African, German or Turk." 

" I need not be admonished," he said, " that the sup- 
port of this doctrine on the eve of an election is dan- 
gerous, especially in counties bordering on the Slave 
States. A deep-seated prejudice against races has dis- 



THE APPEAL TO THE PEOPLE 429 

figured the human mind for ages. For two centuries 
it has oppressed the black man and held him in bondage 
after white salvery had ceased to exist. Now it de- 
prives him of every right in the Southern States. We 
have joined in inflicting these wrongs. How has the 
Father of this blameless race rewarded this prejudice 
and treated this despotism? Let the scarfs upon your 
garments and the gory graves that dot a thousand 
bloody battle-fields give the sad answer. 

" This doctrine of human equality may be unpopu- 
lar with besotted ignorance. But, popular or unpop- 
ular, I shall stand by it until I am relieved of the 
unprofitable labors of earth. Being the foundation of 
our Republic I have full faith in its ultimate triumph. 
I may not live to see it. I may not be worthy of such 
happiness. If it is to be finally defeated and the hopes 
of man thus extinguished, I pray God that when it 
happens I may be insensible to human misery ; that my 
senses may be locked in ' cold obstruction and in 
death.' " 

Is there anything in all of Stevens' long life incon- 
sistent with this noble confession of political faith? 
Though he stood facing great odds he dared to defy 
the deep popular prejudices surrounding him, and his 
campaign message sounded forth like a clarion note 
or a high call to arms in defense of the rights of man, 
— of black men as well as white. No man ever stood 
with a more unswerving or a bolder front for this 
fundamental article of democracy, — the equal rights 
of all men beneath the law. In that cause his militant 
courage never wavered, and his spirit was immortal. 

The result of the election was an overwhelming de- 



430 THE LIFE OF THADDEUS STEVENS 

feat for the President. The Republicans elected one 
hundred and forty-three members to the House of 
Representatives, the Democrats but forty-nine. This 
gave the Republicans a three-fourths majority in the 
House. They had carried every Union state with the 
exception of Delaware, Maryland, and Kentucky. In 
the Senate they had more than a two-thirds majority, 
and it was evident that the congressional party would 
be able to do as it chose in the matter of reconstruc- 
tion, regardless of the opinions and vetoes of the Pres- 
ident. The people had spoken in unmistakable tones 
on the subject of reconstruction. The policy of the 
President had been discredited; the policy of Con- 
gress had been sustained. The popular will had been 
made clear. It was now to be seen how the popular 
mandate would be interpreted and observed by those 
in places of power and responsibility. 



CHAPTER XVII 

MILITARY RECONSTRUCTION 

TX7'HEN Congress met in December, 1866, John- 
* * son's policy of reconstruction was regarded as 
res ad judicata. The country had sat in judgment upon 
it and had thrown it out of court. It had been fully 
explained to the people and as fully repudiated, while 
Congress had received an endorsement that was em- 
phatic and complete. If ever we needed in America 
responsible ministerial government we needed it then. 
We needed a working system by which the Executive, 
after such a defeat upon an appeal to the people, would 
have been forced to resign, and the administrative and 
legislative branches of the government could have been 
brought into unity and harmony upon the pressing is- 
sue before the country. 

After such a crushing defeat before the electorate, 
Johnson should have resigned or modified his course. 
He did neither. In his message of December, 1866, 
he again boldly defended his policy. He asserted that 
his convictions had undergone no change, but their 
correctness had been confirmed by time; that the ten 
political communities at the South " are nothing less 
than states of this Union," and that " their right to 
representation is as strong now as it will be ten years 
hence." He renewed expression of his regret that 
loyal Senators and Representatives from his recon- 

431 



432 THE LIFE OF THADDEUS STEVENS 

structed states had not been admitted to their vacant 
seats in Congress, and the chief recommendation of 
his message was for the speedy admission of Southern 
members, which would, as he said, " consummate the 
work of reconstruction." 

This seemed like an obstinate reiteration of old 
ideas, already discredited by the country, and it is not 
surprising that Congress, refusing to pay any further 
heed to Johnson, proceeded with plans of its own. It 
was now known that the Fortieth Congress would 
have a greater majority against the President and 
would be more radical than the Thirty-ninth had been, 
and it was hardly to be expected that, in the closing 
session of the latter body, much respect or patience 
would be shown toward Johnson's proposals. 

Johnson had said at Cleveland that nothing could 
turn him from his purpose " but the people and the 
God who spoke me into existence." The people had 
done what they could, but since no heed was given to 
their voice, it was not to be wondered at that the con- 
gressional leaders acted upon the theory that the voice 
who had " spoken him into existence " had as little 
weight in determining Johnson's course as the voice of 
the people who had spoken in such unmistakable tones 
at the ballot box; that if Johnson were guided by any 
spiritual revelation apart from this world, it was a 
revelation that came up, not down. A pious old 
Scotchman had fervently prayed that he might be put 
right at the outset, because, the Lord knows, if ever 
he got wrong heaven and earth could not change him. 
So it was with Johnson, the Obstinate, who had de- 
termined in all respects what reconstruction should be, 



MILITARY RECONSTRUCTION 433 

and no verdict of earth or heaven was to be allowed 
to change it. 

For a President in such a state of mind there was 
no further use. Since he could not be made to resign 
he could be ignored. Hereafter Johnson is to be 
looked upon merely as an obstacle to the work of mod- 
erate and conservative reconstruction, or as one of the 
factors on which the radicals might rely to promote 
their ends. His obstinate and persistent refusal to co- 
operate with Congress in reconstruction, and the un- 
happy results that followed, will ever serve to remind 
the student of this period of the great loss and calamity 
that came to his country in the death of Abraham 
Lincoln. 

The people had commanded Congress to advance, 
not to retreat. Moderate congressional leaders now 
recognized and openly declared that the people had 
demanded at the ballot box that an additional condi- 
tion of reconstruction should be imposed. This meant 
negro suffrage. 1 Reunion on the basis of the four- 
teenth amendment might have been, but it was now too 
late for that. Events were serving Stevens well, and 
things were coming his way. The fall elections ; the 
persistent attitude of Johnson in spite of the popular 
mandate ; and the action of the Southern Legislatures 
in rejecting the fourteenth amendment, — all these 
played directly into the hands of the radical leader. 
He now used Johnson's obstinacy and his discredited 
policy for purposes of party discipline. If he could 
convict any lingering weak-kneed Republican of be- 

1 See Blaine, in the House, Dec. ioth, 1866, and Fessenden and 
Edmunds, in the Senate, Dec. 19th and 20th. 



434 THE LIFE OF THADDEUS STEVENS 

ing tinged with " Andy Johnsonism," it was sufficient 
for his purpose. 

But a most powerful weapon in his hand, for his 
radical work, was the attitude of the South toward 
the fourteenth amendment. It has been charged that 
Stevens and the radicals neither desired nor expected 
that the South would ratify the fourteenth amendment, 
and that the punitive clause of that amendment was 
inserted with the deliberate purpose of preventing its 
ratification by the South, and thus defeating its adop- 
tion. 1 It is impossible to see how this could be be- 
lieved concerning Stevens, whose outspoken opinions 
on the subject were known of all men. He was un- 
willing to have the South consulted in the matter. If 
his opponents urged that policy, that was their busi- 
ness, not his. If this charge were believed by John- 
son and his political advisers in the North, common 
political sagacity would have suggested that they should 
seek to circumvent the radicals by throwing their sup- 
port to the amendment. If the President with the 
Democratic party at the North had, at any time after 
the amendment were offered, advised the people of the 
South to accept it and come into the Union on the 
terms that it offered, as Tennessee had been permitted 
to do, it could have been accomplished. 2 

Johnson and his followers pursued exactly the op- 
posite course. The President advised the Southern 

1 " This seems to have been inserted for the express purpose 
of preventing the adoption by the Southern States of any of the 
amendments proposed. It may not be the -motive of the com- 
mittee, but it will be the result of their action." Raymond, in 
the House, May 9, 1866. See, also, Dewit's Impeachment of 
Johnson, pp. 93^96, and Rhodes, V, p. 609. 

2 Garfield, in the House, Feb. 12, 1867, Globe. 



MILITARY RECONSTRUCTION 435 

Legislatures to reject the amendment. He would yield 
nothing to Congress. He denied the right of Con- 
gress to pass the amendment while some of the states 
were unrepresented, and he led the South to hope that 
a new Congress might offer easier terms. Samuel J. 
Randall, Democratic member from Pennsylvania, said 
it were better to punish the Southern leaders by ban- 
ishment, or otherwise, and not put a stigma upon a 
whole people; they would not belie their natures by 
" writing themselves down as slaves at the bidding of 
this central directory." 1 Randall quoted a fierce de- 
nunciation of the fourteenth amendment from an ed- 
itorial in the New York Times that was calculated to 
further arouse and stiffen resistance in the South. Ac- 
cording to the Times the amendment was but a " bur- 
lesque and a farce," and its proper designation should 
be, " a plan to prolong indefinitely the exclusion of the 
South from Congress, by imposing conditions to which 
the Southern people would never submit." Raymond, 
of New York, a Johnson Republican, asserted in the 
House that the Southern States would not seek rep- 
resentation on the conditions proposed ; they " would 
not purchase the mockery of representation at such a 
price." They would take their chances on a new dis- 
pensation, and would wait to see whether in three 
short years the government would not come into 
the hands of " the late rebels and their Northern 
allies." 2 Senator Dixon, of Connecticut, also a John- 
son Republican, spoke to the same effect. He pre- 

1 House, May 10, 1866. This was said of the first form of 
the third section of the amendment. 

2 Globe, May 9, 1866. 



436 THE LIFE OF THADDEUS STEVENS 

dieted (the wish obviously being father to the 
thought) that the South would wait to see what the 
next elections would develop, and he said it was 
" hardly worth while to discuss the merits of measures 
which to be valid must be accepted by communities 
which are sure to reject them." 1 

Stevens' plan, of course, would have been wiser, — 
to have adopted the fourteenth amendment without 
asking the consent of the Southern States. It must 
be confessed that Congress showed a lack of common 
sense and sagacity in asking the Southern leaders and 
their people deliberately to consent to their own pun- 
ishment, — a punishment that was made to appear to 
a proud people like a humiliation. It was said that 
they were asked to be the instruments of their own 
dishonor, and to put a stigma upon the men whom they 
had elected to lead their cause. But that was not 
Stevens' policy, and in the light of the repeated en- 
couragements that Johnson and his Northern sup- 
porters gave to the South to reject the plan that Con- 
gress saw fit to impose, it is hardly reasonable to 
charge upon Stevens and the radicals responsibility 
for that rejection. 2 That responsibility lay else- 
where. 

True, Stevens expected the Southern States to act 
as they did. The offer of the fourteenth amendment 
to the South, against his will, merely gave him an 

1 Globe, May 2, 1866, p. 2332. 

2 Some of the Johnson State Legislatures in the South would 
very probably have ratified the fourteenth amendment if it had 
not been for the President's direct interference and advice. He 
was constantly urging, by letter and telegram, that " there 
should be no faltering " in the sustainment of " my policy," and 
holding out false promises as to what they might expect. 



MILITARY RECONSTRUCTION 437 

added advantage ; he could now plausibly assert that 
its rejection and the testimony of his opponents in en- 
couraging its rejection, exactly confirmed what he had 
said all along, namely, that the ex-Confederates were 
not disposed to submit to the national authority any 
further than they were compelled to by the necessity 
of force; that if left to a free choice their spirit would 
be that of defiance. Now that they had had a chance 
to show their temper, the proof was positive. By the 
close of 1866 all but three of the Southern Legisla- 
tures, following the advice of Johnson and the North- 
ern Democratic party, had rejected this amendment, 
and it was known that the other three would soon fol- 
low in the same policy. In many cases this rejection 
was almost unanimous, in some cases peremptory. 
" The most votes they got for it were four," as Stevens 
said, while combating Bingham's policy of waiting 
still further for the adoption of the fourteenth amend- 
ment. This certainly seemed like an attitude of de- 
fiance, if not of contempt. The radicals could now 
urge w r ith force that terms had been offered that were 
moderate, reasonable, and fair; that the terms had 
been rejected with arrogance, and that these spates 
with increased political power, should never again en- 
ter the halls of Congress, until " they had changed 
their tone and manner." * 

The way this action appeared to the people of the 
North was repeatedly reflected in Congress. ' The 
last one of the sinful ten," said Garfield, " has at last, 
with scorn and contempt, flung back into our teeth, 
the magnanimous offer of a generous nation. It is 

x Wade, Senate, Dec. 14, 1866. 



438 THE LIFE OF THADDEUS STEVENS 

now our turn to act. They would not cooperate with 
us in rebuilding what they had destroyed. We must 
remove the rubbish and rebuild from the bottom." 1 
Congress had, in good faith, offered the plan of the 
fourteenth amendment to the country, and it was un- 
derstood, though there was no express pledge to that 
effect, that the great turning point in the readmission 
of the states was its adoption by the South. What 
motive was there in its rejection but a spirit of dis- 
loyalty, or a partisan purpose for the recovery of 
power in the hope of being able later to dictate terms 
that would suit themselves? This was the way the 
matter appeared to nine-tenths of the victorious Re- 
publicans of the North. 

Under the circumstances it was not difficult for 
Stevens and his fellow radicals to convince their party 
colleagues in Congress that it was the expectation and 
purpose of their opponents, by a combination of the 
President, the Democratic party of the North, and the 
solid unreconstructed South, to restore the " rebels," 
not only to their rights, but to political power within 
the Union. New provisions and guarantees must be 
had to prevent this consummation. 

No one could doubt the honesty of Stevens' pur- 
pose, nor his deep convictions. His qualities as a 
party leader now stood out preeminently. Flis leader- 
ship had been potent before; the party situation now 
made it absolute. 2 Stevens deemed it his bounden 

1 Globe, Feb. 6, 1867. 

2 " Stevens and Sumner were now to see the triumph of their 
doctrines which had long been treated with contumacy and 
ridicule. Stevens, truculent, vindictive, and cynical, dominated 
the House of Representatives in the second session of this Con- 



MILITARY RECONSTRUCTION 439 

duty to do all that in him lay to circumvent and con- 
found the party politics of his opponents, and secure 
the dominance of his own, the only true party of the 
Union. He believed that negro suffrage would help 
his party to retain power; he therefore favored negro 
suffrage. He did not urge it as an abstract proposi- 
tion, nor as necessary to a fair equality of human 
rights. 1 Though he believed devotedly in the equality 
of all men before the law in their right to life, liberty 
and happiness, yet he did not regard voting, regardless 
of qualification, as a natural right, and in urging un- 
qualified negro suffrage at this time, he was governed 
chiefly by his party interests. He was no hypocrite 
and he made no concealment of his purpose. 

" I believe upon my conscience," he said, " that on 
the continued ascendency of that party depends the 
safety of this great nation. If impartial suffrage is 
excluded in the rebel states every one of them is sure 
to send a solid rebel delegation to Congress and cast a 
solid rebel electoral vote. They, with their kindred 
Copperheads in the North will elect the President and 
control Congress." 2 

In this Stevens merely voiced the opinion of an 
overwhelming majority of his countrymen. Those 
who deplore the mistakes of reconstruction — and 
those mistakes were many, — and those who are ac- 

gress with even less opposition than in the first. A keen and 
relentlessly logical mind, an ever ready gift of biting sarcasm 
and stinging repartee, and a total lack of scruple as to means 
in the pursuit of a legislative end, secured him an ascendency in 
the House which none of his party associates ever dreamed of 
disputing." Dunning, Reconstruction, pp. 86-87. 

1 See p. 389. 

2 Globe, Jan. 3, 1867. 



440 THE LIFE OF THADDEUS STEVENS 

customed to think of Thaddeus Stevens as a partisan 
and vindictive reprobate, who was personally respon- 
sible for all the ills of those unhappy times, would do 
well to remember that the partisanship of Stevens was 
merely the partisanship of his day. He undoubtedly 
had the endorsement, if not the clear and direct man- 
date, of his party constituency in the North, as well 
as the backing of his party majority in Congress. 
What he did, he did by their approval and consent. It 
is also well to reflect that for the two cardinal errors 
in the early history of reconstruction, — those relating 
to the great amendment that was generously offered 
as a basis of reunion, — Thaddeus Stevens was cer- 
tainly not responsible. The first of these errors was 
in submitting the amendment to the Southern States; 
the second was in their defiant rejection of it upon its 
submission, — an action which was one of the most 
potent and most fatal factors in the whole history of 
reconstruction. 

It is, of course, no tribute to Stevens to suggest that 
if these errors had been avoided his further purposes 
would have been thwarted. But if better things came 
to worse it should be recognized that others were re- 
sponsible as well as he, and fairness requires that this 
be appreciated properly, as we come to view the un- 
fortunate policy of reconstruction in which Stevens 
now becomes the prime promoter. 

At the close of 1866, Johnson's plan having been 
eliminated, there were open to the congressional lead- 
ers two possible modes of dealing with the problem of 
the South. One was to adopt a waiting policy that 
would let the Southern States alone, recognize them 






MILITARY RECONSTRUCTION 441 

as organized states with federal rights suspended, but 
refuse them representation until they were ready to 
reconsider their action, and, of their accord, accede 
to the terms that Congress had proposed in the four- 
teenth amendment. The other mode pointed to a pol- 
icy of national interference and control that would 
supersede the governments set up by President John- 
son, and set up new governments that would be ac- 
ceptable to Congress, in the meantime governing the 
South by national authority until such time as Con- 
gress saw fit to restore statehood. 

The more radical policy was adopted and Congress 
began the work of reconstruction anew, — " clearing 
away the rubbish and building from the bottom up," 
as Garfield expressed it. This was, on the whole, 
probably the wiser of the two courses for Congress to 
adopt, but a combination of untoward circumstances 
seemed destined to prevent Congress from adopting a 
scheme of reorganization that was moderate and wise. 1 
There was no longer any hope of cooperation between 
President and Congress; the rejection of the four- 
teenth amendment showed that the problem had to be 
met in the midst of sectional passion and resentment; 
the frequent and cruel Southern outrages — or the be- 
lief in the Northern mind that such outrages were of 
common occurrence — toward the negroes and Union 

1 Professor Burgess, an eminent political scientist and a stu- 
dent of this period of American history, says that " there can 
be no question in the mind of any sound political scientist and 
constitutional lawyer, that Congress was in the right in brush- 
ing aside the results of Executive reconstruction in 1S67, and in 
beginning the work itself from the bottom up. It ought to have 
done so in 1865. . . . While it is strange that Congress did not 
follow this course in 1865 it is simply astounding that it made 
such a mess of it in 1867." Reconstruction. 



442 THE LIFE OF THADDEUS STEVENS 

men of the South, leading to the belief that there must 
be immediate national protection; the feeling that the 
ballot might be a weapon of self-protection for the 
negro; Republican bitterness toward Johnson on ac- 
count of his partisan removals; serious divisions 
within the councils and among the leaders of the Re- 
publican party, — these circumstances, combined with 
the fact that the problem had to be met in the short 
session of a few weeks, amid other pressing business 
of importance, will serve to explain, if not to excuse, 
what has been considered the culpable shortcoming of 
the final congressional plan of reconstruction. 

These extenuating circumstances, the conflicts and 
cross-purposes in the midst of haste and hurry, as well 
as Stevens' agency in the progress of events, are re- 
vealed in the record of the last session of the Thirty- 
ninth Congress. 

At the opening of Congress in December, 1866, the 
Joint Committee on Reconstruction was reappointed, 
the life of the old committee having expired with the 
previous session. 1 One of the earliest matters to 
which Congress directed its attention was that of fix- 
ing a day for the meeting of the Fortieth Congress. 
Johnson was not to be left again to direct affairs alone 
during a recess of Congress. The latter body was de- 
termined to regulate the times of its own sessions, that 
it might be in position to regulate and control in mat- 
ters of reconstruction. Accordingly, on December 3, 
1866, Schenck, of Ohio, introduced a bill providing 
for the meeting of the Fortieth Congress immediately 
upon the expiration of the Thirty-ninth, — so distrusts 

1 December 4, 1866. 



MILITARY RECONSTRUCTION 443 

ful and antagonistic was Congress toward the Execu- 
tive. This bill passed both houses and became a law 
on January 10, 1867. 

At the opening of the session the problem of re- 
construction was pending before Congress under two 
forms. One proposal was the bill of April 30, 1866, 
promising restoration on the basis of the fourteenth 
amendment and the establishment, in the Southern 
States, of a republican form of government. This 
had come before Congress by the order and sanc- 
tion of the Joint Committee on Reconstruction. It 
recognized the Southern communities as organized 
states, competent to ratify an amendment. It in- 
volved the submission of the amendment to those 
states and the recognition of the validity of Johnson's 
work in reconstruction to a large extent. 

This was the policy of waiting, of patience, of giv- 
ing the South another chance at the conservative offer 
already rejected. This was the policy still favored by 
the more moderate Republicans led by John A. Bing- 
ham, of Ohio. It is hardly necessary to say that this 
was not the policy of Stevens. He set himself, as he 
had been in the previous session, in stout opposition to 
it, and the difference of view on this policy led to a 
breach, if not to bitterness, between Stevens and 
Bingham, two of the ablest of the congressional lead- 
ers. 

The other proposal before Congress was a substi- 
tute offered by Stevens, on January 3, 1867, not on 
behalf of the committee, but for himself. He offered 
this as a substitute, also, for the bill that he had in- 
troduced and discussed in the closing days of the pre- 



444 THE LIFE OF THADDEUS STEVENS 

ceeding session. 1 Stevens' substitute asserted that the 
Southern States had forfeited their rights under the 
Constitution; that they could be reinstated only by 
action of Congress, and it prescribed a method by 
which those states were to be permitted to form valid 
state governments. The Johnson governments were 
recognized as valid, not as state governments, but for 
municipal purposes only, and provisions were set forth 
for holding new state conventions and forming and 
adopting new constitutions. In the process of new 
state-making a new electorate was created. The ne- 
groes were included, — " all male citizens above the age 
of twenty-one years " ; but all persons who held office, 
civil or military, under the Confederacy, were declared 
to have " forfeited their citizenship " and were not to 
be allowed to vote until five years after they had de- 
clared their desire to be reinvested with the rights of 
citizenship, and, renouncing allegiance to all other 
governments, had sworn allegiance to the United 
States. 

This was virtually an enabling act providing for the 
making of new states in the South on the basis of 
negro suffrage, and the exclusion of the leading ex- 
Confederates. 

On these two policies, or proposals, an extended de- 
bate occurred, lasting until the last of January, 1867, 
till so late in the session that if anything were done at 
all by the Thirty-ninth Congress it had to be done in a 
hurry. Such a diversity of opinion developed on the 
Republican side that Stevens himself was disposed to 
have his measure laid on the table, and to let the prob- 
1 See p. 420. 



MILITARY RECONSTRUCTION 445 

lem of reconstruction go over to the Fortieth Con- 
gress. 1 In proposing his bill, Stevens made an ex- 
tended speech, on January 3, 1867. He urged early 
action, as he deemed it important that some conclu- 
sion should be arrived at as to what should be done 
with the rebel states. They were getting worse and 
worse, and action was now all the more necessary on 
account of the late decision of the Supreme Court in 
the Milligan case. In this case the Court had decided 
that military commissions and trials by courts martial 
were unconstitutional, except where a state of war pre- 
vented the civil courts from acting. ' That decision," 
said Stevens, " although in terms perhaps not as in- 
famous as the Dred Scott decision, is yet far more 
dangerous in its operation upon the lives and liberties 
of the loyal men in the rebel states. . . . That decision 
has unsheathed the dagger of the assassin, and places 
the knife of the rebel at the throat of every man who 
dares to proclaim himself to be now, or to have been 
heretofore, a loyal Union man. If the doctrine enun- 
ciated in that decision be true, never were the people of 
any country, anywhere or at any time, in such terrible 

1 The strained relation between Stevens and Bingham is re- 
vealed in the debates. Bingham sought to have Stevens' bill 
referred to the Reconstruction Committee, to delay its passage 
or materially to modify it. Stevens believed that this would be 
to send it to its grave. His former bill had been sent to this 
"tomb of the Capulets," and he wished that whatever amend- 
ments the House saw fit to propose in the process of perfecting 
the bill, should be offered in the House without reference to 
the committee. Bingham remarked that he did "not concur 
in the declaration of the venerable gentleman from Pennsyl- 
vania, that the recommitment of the bill is equivalent to its 
death," whereupon Stevens retorted that he had not asked his 
concurrence, and in "all this contest about reconstruction I do 
not propose either to take his counsel, recognize his authority, 
or believe a word he says." Globe, Jan. 28, 1867, p. 816. 



446 THE LIFE OF THADDEUS STEVENS 

peril as are our loyal brethren at the South." Unless 
Congress acts speedily for the protection of the freed- 
man and Unionist at the South " against the barba- 
rians who are daily murdering them," he asked every 
man who loved liberty whether " we shall not be liable 
to the just censure of the world for our negligence or 
cowardice." 

His bill w r as designed to enable loyal men to form 
governments that would be in loyal hands, by which 
they might protect themselves from these outrages. 
The Johnson governments " would not convict the 
murderers that were being turned loose under the Mill 
ligan decision," saved from trial by United States 
military authorities; and provision must be made that 
such construction should not open the door to greater 
injuries. 

" Congress must not allow the revolution through 
which the country had been passing to subside until the 
nation has been erected into a perfect republic. But 
little had been done toward establishing the govern- 
ment on the ti*ue principles of liberty and justice. We 
have broken the material shackles of four million 
slaves. We have unchained them from the stake and 
allowed them locomotion, provided they do not walk in 
paths that are trod by white men. . . . We have im- 
posed upon them the privilege of fighting our battles, 
of dying in defense of freedom, of bearing their equal 
portion of taxes, but where have we given them the 
privilege of ever participating in the formation of the 
laws of the government of their native land? By 
what civil weapon have we enabled them to defend 
themselves against oppression and injustice? Call 



MILITARY RECONSTRUCTION 447 

you this liberty, where four millions are subjects, but 
not citizens ? Then Persia with her kings and satraps 
was free; then Turkey is free! Their subjects had 
liberty of motion, but the laws were made without and 
against their will. . . . Think not I would slander my 
native land ; I would reform it. Twenty years ago I 
denounced it as a despotism; then twenty million 
while men enchained four million black men. I pro- 
nounce it no nearer a true republic now when twenty- 
five million of a privileged class exclude five million 
from all participation in the rights of government." 1 

Then Stevens again set forth at length his theory as 
to the belligerent states of the South. He denied to 
the President, the mere servant of the sovereign people, 
who issue their orders to him through Congress, any 
power to create new states, or to dictate organic laws, 
or to fix the qualification of voters, or to determine 
that states are republican. " Though the President is 
Commander-in-chief, Congress is his commander, and, 
God willing, he shall obey. He and his minions shall 
learn that this is not a government of kings and 
satraps, but a government of the people, and that 
Congress is the people." Congress has all power but 
what is executive and judicial. 

He reviewed the shortcomings of the President's 
policy that had been condemned by the country. In 
opposition he demanded that the conquered belligerent, 
according to the law of nations, should pay at least a 
part of the damages and expenses of the war; and es- 
pecially that the loyal people who were plundered and 
impoverished by rebel raiders, should be fully indemni- 

1 Globe, January 3, 1867. 



448 THE LIFE OF THADDEUS STEVENS 

fied. Treason should be made odious, not by bloody 
executions, but by other adequate punishments. 

These states are now without governments. They 
must have enabling acts. They must be placed under 
the guardianship of loyal men, or the blood and treas- 
ure of the war would have been spent in vain. He 
would waive at the time the matter of punishment, 
though wisdom prompted, in future, moderate confisca- 
tions both as reproof and example. Impartial suf- 
frage was to be the rule. That principle had been 
fixed in regard to the territories and the District of 
Columbia, and there is more reason why the colored 
voters should be admitted in the rebel states, being 
the great bulk of the loyal people. Otherwise these 
states would be ruled by traitors, and loyal men 
would be oppressed, exiled, or murdered. Loyal 
blacks had a better right to choose rulers and make 
laws than rebel whites. It is necessary to the protec- 
tion of the loyal white men. The blacks and the loyal 
whites would act in a body, and, united, they would 
form a majority, control the states, and protect them- 
selves. 

Such a measure as the one for which he was plead- 
ing had been urged by the late convention of Southern 
loyalists at Philadelphia ; without it these Union men 
would be the victims of daily persecutions. 

He then spoke of the party purpose. 1 " You must," 
he said, " divide the South between loyalists, without 
regard to color, and disloyalists, or you will be the per- 
petual vassals of the free-trade, irritated, revengeful 
South. For these, among other reasons, I am for the 

1 See p. 391. 



MILITARY RECONSTRUCTION 449 

negro suffrage in every rebel state. If it be just, it 
should not be denied; if it be necessary, it should be 
adopted; if it be a punishment to traitors, they deserve 
it. 

" But it will be said, ' This is negro equality ! ' 
What is negro equality, about which so much is said 
by knaves, and some of which is believed by men who 
are not fools? It means, as understood by honest re- 
publicans, just this much and no more : Every man, 
no matter what his race or color; every earthly being 
who has an immortal soul, has an equal right to justice, 
honesty and fair play with every other man; and the 
law should secure him those rights. The same law 
which condemns or acquits an African, should con- 
demn or acquit a white man. The same law which 
gives a verdict in a white man's favor should give a 
verdict in a black man's favor on the same state of 
facts. Such is the law of God, and such ought to be 
the law of man. This doctrine does not mean that a 
negro shall sit on the same seat or eat at the same 
table with a white man. That is a matter of taste 
which every man must decide for himself. The law 
has nothing to do with it. If there be any who are 
afraid of the rivalry of the black man, let them meet 
their competitors in a fair field, and there will be no 
danger that their white neighbors will prefer the Afri- 
cans to themselves. But there will be danger that 
those will be distanced in the race who are influenced 
by this senseless cry of negro equality, for I have 
never seen even a contraband slave who had not more 
sense than such men." 

Suffrage for the negro is a step forward. It is " an 



45o THE LIFE OF THADDEUS STEVENS 

assault upon ignorance and prejudice, and timid men 
shrink from it. Are such men fit to sit in the places 
of statesmen? There are periods in the history of na- 
tions when statesmen can make themselves names for 
posterity; but such occasions are never improved by 
cowards. In the acquisition of true fame courage is 
just as necessary in the civilian as in the military hero. 
It was courage that made Luther the great man of the 
Reformation, around whom the others revolve as 
satellites and shine by his light. We may not aspire 
to fame. But great events fix the eye of history on 
small objects and magnify their meanness. Let us at 
least escape that condition." 1 

Between this radical program of Stevens' and the 
more conservative spirits on the Republican side of the 
House, there was to be another trial of strength. 
Bingham, leader of the conservative Republicans, 
made a plea for the " grander qualities of magnanimity 
and mercy " rather than " stern, relentless, even- 
handed justice," and Mr. Rhodes expresses the opinion 
that despite the irritation caused by the rejection of the 
amendment by the Southern States, such were the 
differences which cropped out when the details of any 
measure were considered, that no further act of re- 
construction would probably have been passed at this 
session had it not been for the able and despotic parlia- 
mentary leadership of Stevens. 2 

1 In this extract I have made some condensation without 
always indicating omissions, but I think I have faithfully re- 
flected the substance, meaning, and temper of Stevens' utter- 
ance. 

2 Rhodes says further of Stevens in this passage: "The old 
man's energy was astonishing. Vindictiveness seemed to ani- 
mate his frame. Already bitter enough in his personal antago- 



MILITARY RECONSTRUCTION 451 

Early in the session, 1 Spalding, of Ohio, prompted 
by Bingham, as Stevens believed, offered a resolution 
requesting the Committee on Reconstruction to con- 
sider the propriety of again proposing to receive the 
Senators and Representatives from the South, if they 
would ratify the fourteenth amendment. Spalding, 
who could speak of Stevens as his " only senior in this 
House," complained that he could never take the floor 
" without being subjected to the caustic criticism of 
the learned gentleman from Pennsylvania." Spald- 
ing sought to explain his position and to defend him- 
self and his more conservative proposal against 
Stevens' attacks. He pleaded for time before other 
and more violent measures were adopted. " Let the 
fourteenth amendment be in the train of adoption 
where it now is till the fourth of March, then if we 
find the measure is repudiated with contempt, and 
flung back in our faces," he pledged himself to go with 
Stevens and his bill. He urged Congress to proceed 
with caution, to " listen to the counsels of reason 
rather than the impulses of passion." Congress was 
now being urged to impeach the President and to con- 
fer the franchise on the freedmen. " What will our 
people at home think of these rank and radical meas- 
ures? " 2 asked Spalding. 

Bingham supported Spalding in this policy. He 

nism to Johnson and the Southern people, he added to this 
bitterness by frequent consultations with those whom he termed 
'loyal men from the South' who hated 'the national leaders of 
opinion,' the men of brain and education in their section, and 
who aimed at supplanting them in political influence and power."' 
History of the United States, Vol. VI, p. 14. 

1 December 10, 1866. 

2 Globe, Jan. 5, 1867. 



452 THE LIFE OF THADDEUS STEVEXS 

wished not to recede from the principles of the four- 
teenth amendment. This amendment had been offi- 
cially recognized by the committee, and had been given 
out by Congress as the best basis for future reconstruc- 
tion. Stevens' more radical proposal had been of- 
fered, as Bingham contended, in a spirit of hostility to 
this amendment, " in the spirit of a distinguished man 
of this country [referring to Johnson] who had been 
making war on the amendment, and asking Congress 
to fling the swindling amendment out of the window." 
An effort was being made, Bingham asserted, to get 
the people to reject this amendment as a basis of resto- 
ration, — the firm enduring basis of fundamental law 
for a repealable act in assumption of powers not be- 
longing to Congress. Bingham contended that Con- 
gress had power to propose the pending amendment to 
the Johnson states organized as they were ; that the 
people of these states might recognize their local 
state governments and ratify the amendment. He 
sought to sustain his position by the analogy of North 
Carolina and Rhode Island in 1789 and 1790. 
" These states, not in the Union nor of the Union, did 
ratify and accept the Constitution, and thereupon were 
admitted to representation in Congress. ... So I sub- 
mit, the people of the insurrectionary states may pro- 
ceed with the work of reorganizing, the formation of a 
constitution, the election of a legislature, and the for- 
mal ratification of a constitutional amendment, and all 
they do in that behalf may by subsequent act of the 
national sovereignty, by resolution, be made valid." j 
Bingham's argument was a mass of inconsistent 
1 Congressional Globe, Jan. 16, 1867. 



MILITARY RECONSTRUCTION 453 

cies and could lead to nothing but confusion in political 
thought, and inefficiency in political action. Stevens 
was perfectly right in denouncing it as absurd and per- 
nicious, and it was a position which a man of Stevens' 
keen and relentless logic found it quite easy to demol- 
ish. In one passage Stevens' opponents in this con- 
troversy would assert that " to ratify a constitutional 
amendment is the exercise of the power of a state of 
the Union " ; 1 in another it would be distinctly affirmed 
that " those states have no power whatever as states 
of this Union," and that they could not prevent the 
other states from adopting the fourteenth amendment 
and making it valid. 2 Bingham recognized that the 
executive and judicial departments of the government 
were arrayed against this latter view, and he went so 
far as to assert that if the Supreme Court should ven- 
ture to declare the adoption of the fourteenth amend- 
ment by this process unconstitutional and invalid, the 
people might see fit to abolish the court itself, — an ut- 
terance so radical in its suggestion as to put to shame 
anything that Stevens had ever proposed toward a 
coordinate department of the government. For one 
purpose it was asserted that these Southern communi- 
ties were states for self-direction and control in de- 
termining their relation to the Union, and their deci- 
sion on questions of their fundamental law; for an- 
ther purpose it was affirmed that " these disorganized 
Southern States have no power to legislate on any 
subject touching life, liberty or property, save by the 
sufferance of the nation represented in Congress, 
whose legislative power is absolute and exclusive with- 
1 Bingham, January 16. - Bingham, January 16. 



454 THE LIFE OF THADDEUS STEVENS 

in these regions that have by rebellion ceased to 
possess the legal co-active force for local state govern- 
ment." Congress should hold out the olive branch 
of peace once more, in the shape of the amendment, 
to states legally competent to accept it; but if they 
did not accept they were to be thrown over as illegal 
states, and valid and legitimate states were to be set 
up in their stead, to be composed of loyal Union men. 

The more one reads of these confused and confusing 
utterances, the more one understands the valid reason 
for Stevens' unquestioned leadership. He had the un- 
clouded mind to see things clearly and to think 
through the problem of constitutional restraints with 
logical accuracy. He knew his solution and the 
ground for it. He had a doctrine that was consistent, 
and he was without fear of successful attack upon it. 
He was at times defeated, often on important proposi- 
tions, and had to accept less than what he contended 
for; but from the hour the struggle opened he neither 
doubted nor wavered as to what he wanted, and dur- 
ing all the long struggle he never laid down a propo- 
sition in debate on which he could be convicted of ob- 
scurity or inconsistency. He never had to retract, 
but repeatedly he had the satisfaction of seeing his 
tardy Republican colleagues come forward to occupy 
the position that he had held from the start. It was 
these qualities, — firmness of purpose, clearness of 
vision and the absence of all doubt and fear — that 
now enabled him again to overcome his inconsistent 
and more wavering Republican colleagues. 

Stevens was in the habit of calling things by the 
names that he thought applied to them. Is he to be 



MILITARY RECONSTRUCTION 455 

censured greatly for denouncing the argument of 
Bingham and his conservative coadjutors, as absurd 
nonsense ? Was not such a contention a " pernicious 
obstruction to sound work " in reconstruction? Was 
the position of his opponents any thing short of self- 
stultification on the part of Congress? If Johnson's 
states were to be declared illegal it should have been 
because they were illegal. If they were illegal they 
had no right to act on the amendment. So far Con- 
gress had not recognized these states by any deliberate 
act; but to submit the amendment would be to admit 
their legality, and then, how could Congress proceed 
to overthrow them on the ground that they had no 
legal right to be? 

Toward those whom Stevens regarded as weak and 
wavering Republican opponents on this proposition, 
he was, as usual, unsparing in his severity. He de- 
nounced the idea that the fourteenth amendment was 
to be the final action of Congress with reference to 
the readmission of the states, as the most " pernicious 
heresy ever promulgated anywhere by any party. It 
left us open, if adopted, to the influx from the South 
of all the unreconstructed rebels that chose to come 
here. When three-fourths of the loyal states have 
ratified that amendment it becomes a part of the Con- 
stitution. What, then, is there for the, Southern 
States to do but to send their representatives here? If 
that doctrine is to prevail there is no power to keep 
them out. . . . What rebel sympathizer could propose 
a more pernicious action ? " " Now, sir, I think I saw 
this tadpole before it had its present shape." Its pres- 
ent form is due to Bingham. — a soft invitation, a feel- 



456 THE LIFE OF THADDEUS STEVENS 

ing the way. It distinctly invites and legalizes the 
action of those states on the amendment; while we 
deny that they have any power or legal right to act as 
states. Could anything more effectually stultify this 
body? "The gentleman (Mr. Spalding) did not in- 
tend to stultify us, but he would have done it un- 
doubtedly." 

As to his animus in urging the policy that he wished 
adopted, Stevens asserted that while dealing boldly 
and fearlessly with principles, he wished to deal fairly 
and justly with all individuals of all parties. He 
claimed that the adoption of the fourteenth amend- 
ment had no bearing whatever on reconstruction, ex- 
cept by providing in its vital feature, " that they shall 
not overwhelm us by a representation based upon the 
negroes who are not voters." 

Instead of placing before these communities a 
proposition that none but states could act upon, Stev- 
ens proposed to repudiate their pretended governments, 
erected under a " bastard reconstruction " ; to regu- 
late them, and direct them to go on and form such 
governments as Congress should order them to form. 
He had voted for the admission of Tennessee, not be- 
cause that state had ratified the fourteenth amend- 
ment, which was of no importance, except as an evi- 
dence of loyalty, but because that state had adopted a 
republican form of government and its new constitu- 
tion had been ratified by the people. He insisted that 
Congress should hold the ground he had held from the 
first : that " these disloyal states are not states known 
to us, but are captive provinces with certain municipal 



.■ 



MILITARY RECONSTRUCTION 457 

institutions which we do not propose yet to disturb, 
but which are referred to in my enabling acts." 

In voting to admit Tennessee he had shut his eyes 
to the fact that " a loyal negro had been put on the 
same footing with a rebel, in being excluded from the 
ballot, and he gave notice that he would never vote for 
the admission of another state without negro suf- 
frage. When Maynard, of Tennessee, reminded him 
that if a rebel should go to Pennsylvania he would find 
political fellowship there, while a loyal negro could 
not, Stevens replied that Pennsylvania ought to blush, 
and many others of the Free States ought to blush for 
the infamous exclusion to which the gentleman refers. 
But will our blushes whiten the countenance of Ten- 
nessee? " 1 

1 Congressional Globe, Jan. 5, 1867. 



I 



CHAPTER XVIII 

MILITARY RECONSTRUCTION {continued) 

N spite of Stevens' objection, his substitute bill, to- 
gether with the original measure of the committee, 
was referred to the Joint Committee on Reconstruc- 
tion, January 28, 1867. Ten days later (February 
6th), by the instruction of the committee, one Repub- 
lican dissenting, 1 Stevens reported a new bill to the 
House. This involved the plan for military recon- 
struction that resulted in the famous Reconstruction 
Act of March, 1867. The bill set aside " the pre- 
tended state governments of the late so-called Con- 
federate States, since they were set up without the 
authority of Congress or the sanction of the people; 
it divided these states into five military districts 
and made them subject to military rule; the Gen- 
eral of the army (Grant) was to assign to the com- 
mand of each district a regular army officer not be- 
low the rank of Brigadier General, with soldiers suffi- 
cient to enforce his authority; the commanders were 
to protect all persons in their rights of person and 
property, to suppress insurrection, disorder and vio- 
lence, to punish all criminals and disturbers of the 
peace, either by the use of civil tribunals or by the 
employment of military tribunals if deemed necessary, 

1 Probably Bingham. 

458 



MILITARY RECONSTRUCTION 459 

without interference by any officer or proceeding of 
the pretended state government; and the courts and 
judicial officers of the United States were forbidden to 
issue writs of habeas corpus on behalf of persons in 
military custody. 

The day after offering the bill Stevens explained its 
purpose in a brief speech and called for immediate ac- 
tion. Already there had been several weeks of dis- 
cussion, and as he did not see that anything w T as to be 
gained by further debate, he felt bound on the mor- 
row to call for a vote. For nearly two years, he 
asserted, these states had been lying in a disorganized 
condition, and they have now no governments that are 
known to the Constitution and laws of the United 
States. Lack of harmony in the councils of the 
dominant party has caused this delay. The Executive 
has attempted to enact new laws and to authorize the 
conquered territory to be represented in Congress with- 
out the action of the sovereign power of the nation. 
The sovereign power of Congress has repudiated the 
authority which has attempted to place states within 
those conquered provinces and has patiently waited in 
the hope of realizing harmony in our councils. The 
hope has failed and a pertinacious Executive has 
sought to maintain the usurpation of pretended gov- 
ernments. And now, at this late period, it has become 
the duty of Congress to assert its right and to do its 
duty in establishing some kind of government for this 
people. Such was the substance of Stevens' apology' 
in presenting this bill. 

" For two years these pretended states," said 
Stevens, "have been in a state of anarchy; for two 



460 THE LIFE OF THADDEUS STEVENS 

years the loyal people of those ten states have endured 
all the horrors of the worst anarchy of any country. 
Persecution, exile and murder have been the order of 
the day within all these territories so far as loyal men 
were concerned, whether white or black, and more es- 
pecially if they happened to be black. We have seen 
the best men, those who stood by the flag of the Union, 
driven from their homes and compelled to live on the 
cold charity of a cold North. We have seen their 
loyal men flitting about everywhere through your 
cities, around your doors, melancholy, depressed, hag- 
gard, like the ghosts of the unburied dead on this side 
of the river Styx, and yet we have borne it with ex- 
emplary patience. We have been enjoying ' our ease 
in our inns ' ; and while we were praising the rebel 
South and asking in piteous terms for mercy for that 
people, we have been deaf to the groans, the agony, 
which have been borne to us by every southern breeze 
from dying and murdered victims. 

" And now we are told that we must not hasten 
this matter. I am not for hastening it unduly ; but I 
am for making one more effort to protect these loyal 
men, without regard to color, from the cruelties of an- 
archy, from persecutions by the malignant, from ven- 
geance visited upon them on our account. If we fail 
to do it, and to do it effectually, we should be respons- 
ible to the civilized world for, I think, the grossest 
neglect of duty that ever a great nation was guilty of 
before to humanity. 1 

The bill, then, proposed to put the " ten disorgan- 
ized states " under the control of the army. " That is 

1 Globe, Feb. 7, 1867, p. 1076. 



MILITARY RECONSTRUCTION 461 

the whole bill," said Stevens. " It does not need much 
examination. One night's rest after its reading is 
enough to digest it." There were now less than fif- 
teen days on the safe side of a veto in which the bill 
must be brought to passage in both houses. Its 
friends were, therefore, not at liberty to indulge dis- 
cussion, and " to-morrow," said Stevens, " God will- 
ing, I will demand the vote." 

The purpose of this measure, the theory of it, or the 
conception of the situation on which it was based, are 
frequently misunderstood. It was not intended as a 
reconstruction bill. The preamble of the bill set forth 
the reason for it : That the " pretended state govern- 
ments "of the South afford no adequate protection for 
life or property, but " countenance and encourage law- 
lessness and crime " ; and that "it is necessary that 
peace and good order should be enforced until loyal 
state governments can be legally established." The 
bill was proposed and supported by its advocates dis- 
tinctly as a war measure, on the theory that war was 
still existing; that the South was in a state of anarchy, 
rebellion, disorder and disloyalty. The bill was a new 
article of war, " commanding the army to return to its 
work of putting down the Rebellion " and keeping the 
peace till the nation could provide suitable republican 
governments there. 1 The bill rested for its defense, 
according to its advocates, entirely upon such a state 
of facts. There was a state of war in the South, not 
flagrant, but cessante as Air. Shellabarger expressed 
it. The bill, in authorizing the suspension of the writ 
of habeas corpus did so on the assumption that the re- 

1 Garfield. Globe, Feb. 8, 1867, p. 1104. 



462 THE LIFE OF THADDEUS STEVENS 

public was in a condition of rebellion, and the public 
safety required " the exercise of this mighty reserved 
force of your government lodged in the ultimate 
powers of war." Flagrant rebellion in the field had 
been crushed by the arms of the republic, but this 
rebellion was still sufficiently strong to overthrow and 
defy the courts in nearly half of the republic. "If 
this is not the condition of the country," said Air. 
Shellabarger, " then we must abandon the bill." * 

Mr. Shellabarger asserted that he could not support 
such a military measure if it were to be regarded 
as at all permanent in character. Mr. Brandegee, of 
Connecticut, in supporting the measure, asserted that 
" already fifteen hundred Union men have been mas- 
sacred in cold blood, whose only crime has been loyalty 
to the flag." 2 

Mr. Boutwell, of Massachusetts, asserted that the 
South was " writhing under cruelties nameless in 
their character, injustice such as has not been per- 
mitted to exist in any country in modern times," and 
that the President had allowed a rebel despotism to be 
enthroned there that must be broken up. 3 Mr. Kel- 
ley, of Pennsylvania, defended the bill merely as a 
police measure, the necessity for it arising because of 
the perfidy of the President. He had set up states 
whose laws depended upon his temper or the state of 
his digestion, whose statutes he suspends or enforces 
as it please his whim. They were not " states " but 
were the offspring of Executive usurpation and " when 

1 Shellabarger, Feb. 8, 1867. Globe, p. 1099. 

2 Blaine, Twenty Years of Cong., Vol. II, p. 252. 

3 Globe, Feb. 9, 1867, p. 11 22. 



MILITARY RECONSTRUCTION 463 

we have brushed these usurpations aside " as Con- 
gress is in duty bound to do, the law will arise which 
it was the purpose of this bill to restore, namely, the 
law that " was in force when Lee and Johnston sur- 
rendered." * 

It was on this ground only, as a war measure 
prompted by public necessity, that Stevens defended 
the bill as he pressed it to passage. He called it " a 
police bill," a temporary substitution for anarchy, 
designed to provide " something that will give pro- 
tection to the people of the Southern States and pre- 
vent the murders, robberies, and slavery there until 
we can have time to frame civil government more in 
conformity with the genius of our institutions." 2 If 
conditions existed in the South such as the promoters 
of this bill claimed, then the bill is to be judged, not 
from the standpoint of a Constitution operative in a 
restored Union, but from the point of view of war 
and public necessity. If the conditions were those of 
insurrection and war, the Constitution had nothing to 
do in restraint of power that might be exercised by the 
government of the United States. 

The House, refusing to sustain Stevens' motion for 
the previous question, entered upon a week of debate. 
Bingham and Blaine, for the conservative Republi- 
cans, sought to amend the bill so as to provide for the 
termination of military rule and for early reconstruc- 
tion on the basis of universal suffrage. Blaine was 
unwilling to support a measure that would place the 
South under military government if it did not at the 

1 Kelley, Feb. 12, 1867, Globe, p. 1177. 

2 Globe, Feb. 8, p. 1104. 



464 THE LIFE OF THADDEUS STEVENS 

same time " prescribe the methods by which the peo- 
ple of a state could by their own action reestablish civil 
government." Blaine, therefore, urged his amend- 
ment, declaring that when any one of the late Confed- 
erate States should assent to the fourteenth amend- 
ment and provide by its constitution for impartial 
male suffrage, without regard to race or color, and 
when such constitution shall have been ratified by the 
popular vote of said state, then such state should be 
declared to be entitled to representation in Congress. 1 
Bingham denounced Stevens '" dogma, that those ten 
insurrectionary states were a foreign and conquered 
country," and affirmed that every act of legislation 
" from the day this Rebellion commenced to this hour 
asserts the very contrary." He asserted again that 
these states were states of the Union, not conquered 
territories, and their citizens should be accorded the 
rights of other citizens. Yet, to defend himself from 
the Democratic position, to save himself from " Andy 
Johnsonism," he affirmed that Congress had undoubted 
power to legislate over those insurgent states " without 
their consent and against their consent," and that their 
state courts were to be allowed no such jurisdiction 
as those of other states. 

Bingham's argument seems rather abstract and doc- 
trinaire, based largely in opposition to the phrase, — ■ 
" so-called states," in the preamble of the act. He 
wished the Southern communities called " states," but 
he was not willing to be consistent by going to the 
length of the Democratic position and treating them as 
states in all respects, with all the rights, powers and 

1 Twenty Years of Cong., II, p. 256. 






MILITARY RECONSTRUCTION 465 

privileges of the other states. Stevens regarded Bing- 
ham's opposition as " captious and discourteous." l 

The Democrats and Johnson Republicans de- 
nounced the bill in vigorous terms. Mr. Le Blond, 
of Ohio, said that its passage would be the " death- 
knell of civil liberty," and the dissolution of the Union. 
" Its preamble, admitting the right of secession, em- 
braces not a single truth." No one, in Mr. Le Blond's 
view, had a right to expect perfect peace throughout 
those states as soon as the war ended. In the nature 
of things there would be lawless conduct on the part 
of many citizens. The radicals desired such dis- 
order, that they might base legislation upon it and 
carry out their designs. This maelstrom committee, 
swallowing up everything that is good and giving out 
everything that is evil, reports this bill taking from the 
President his powers as Commander-in-chief of the 
army in defiance of the Constitution. No one had 
ever heard of such a monstrosity, such a stretch of 
power on the part of Congress as authorizing military 
commanders to confer power on civil tribunals to try 
civil cases. " The bill denies the right of trial by jury 
and strikes down at a blow every important provision 
of your Constitution. It paralyzes the arm of the 
judiciary and repudiates the decision of the Supreme 
Court. It is an attempt to destroy the Union by legis- 
lative usurpation ; and in my honest conviction noth- 
ing but the strong arm of the American people, wielded 
upon the bloody battle-field, will ever restore civil lib- 
erty to the American people again." 2 

1 Globe, Feb. 13, 1867, p. 1213. 

2 Globe, Feb. 1867, p. 1078. 



466 THE LIFE OF THADDEUS STEVENS 

A few days later, on February 12th, in discussing a 
proposed bill for the civil government of Louisiana, Le 
Blond distinctly affirmed that in the conflict of opinion 
on the Republican side of the House, Stevens was the 
one man who foresaw the difficulties that were to be 
encountered. Le Blond evidently thought the bill 
might be made unpopular if it could be shown to rest 
on Stevens' " conquered province theory." " At an 
early period in this contest," said Le Blond, " he 
(Stevens) foresaw where we were drifting, and for 
the purpose of meeting it, he at once took the position 
that these states were conquered provinces whose peo- 
ple were subjects to be dealt with according to the will 
of Congress. But who does not remember that when 
he proclaimed that doctrine in this House there were 
not within these walls ten men who approved it? 
Since that period a change has come over the spirit, 
over the dreams of the other side, and we now find 
them, if not yielding themselves willing subjects to his 
doctrine, at least willing to vote for provisions quite 
as bad and quite as revolutionary as any that have 
been directed by that gentleman." 1 

Mr. Finck, of Ohio, another Democrat, denounced 
the bill as " an attempt to overthrow free government 
and to establish on its ruins the principles of military 
despotism." It is at war with the Constitution. The 
only ground for it was the revolutionary theory of 
its author, the theory of conquest. No government 
can continue to be free when one-third of its people 
are subject to military power. We can not perpetuate 
the Union of the states on principles of hatred, malice, 

1 Globe, Feb. 12, 1867, p. 1170. 



MILITARY RECONSTRUCTION 467 

and revenge. " Do we expect to make the people of 
the South love the Union by trampling upon rights as 
sacred to them as they can be to us? " * 

Finck denied that there was a state of war existing 
within the Union, — the assumption on which the bill 
rested. " There is not in any one of these states," he 
said, " a single arm upraised against the just authority 
and jurisdiction of the United States. We are in a 
state of peace. The purpose is to compel these states 
to endorse the policy of the radicals whose doctrines, if 
carried out successfully, would subvert the Constitu- 
tion and disrupt the Union. The effect of this bill is 
to prevent the Union of the states and to strike down 
the great right of local government. It is an attempt 
not only to control the government of a state, but to 
take power out of the hands of your own race and to 
confer it upon another race." For this and other rea- 
sons Finck denounced the bill as " monstrous and revo- 
lutionary." 2 

Henry J. Raymond, of New York, in a speech of 
considerable length, denounced the bill as a " simple 
abnegation of all attempts to exercise civil authority." 
He denied its necessity; no emergency called for it. 
He affirmed that the President had restored peace. 
The war " is ended in every sense : in a legal sense, in 
every international sense, in the sense of the Constitu- 
tion." He denounced the measure as one of the " most 
violent the ingenuity of man could devise. Stevens' 
bill," he said, " that had been sent to the committee was 

1 Globe, Feb. 7, 1867, p. 1078. 

2 Globe, Feb. 12, 1867, p. 1170. Finck's speech here referred 
to was on a bill providing a civil government for Louisiana, but 
his remarks apply also to the pending military bill. 



468 THE LIFE OF THADDEUS STEVENS 

far preferable to this one. The passage of such a 
bill will disturb business and confidence everywhere and 
will not in the slightest degree tend to restore peace 
and harmony in the Union." 

Stevens proved more than a match for his opponents 
at every turn. He paid no attention to the spokesman 
of Andrew Johnson in the House, Mr. Raymond, nor 
to the Copperhead opposition of Le Blond and Finck. 
It was enough to know that they were the friends 
and apologists of rebels. He taunted his weak-kneed 
Republican colleagues, who wished to delay or amend 
his bill, with having been convinced by the arguments 
of the President, — and the sentiment of the country 
was so pronounced against Johnson that such a ref- 
erence never failed to make his opponents wince. He 
prevented amendments from coming to a vote, and 
finally he defeated on a decisive test Blaine's motion 
to refer the bill for revision to the Committee on the 
Judiciary. 

It was on the 13th of February, 1867, that the de- 
cisive vote occurred in the House. Stevens, though 
in his seventy-fifth year and in a weak state of health, 
manifested a remarkable vigor in his management of 
the bill and in his final speech just before the vote was 
taken. He professed depression of spirit and grief 
because of the supineness of Congress and the dis- 
tressed condition of the country. Here Congress has 
been sitting for months, and while the South has been 
bleeding at every pore nothing has been done to protect 
the loyal people there in their persons, liberty, or prop- 
erty. He would indulge, not in reproach, but in grief 
rather, since we live here " enjoying ourselves, those 



MILITARY RECONSTRUCTION 469 

of us who have health and spirits, while the South 
is covered all over with anarchy, murder, and rapine." 
We have declared that the President has usurped au- 
thority, and that what he has done is void in the 
face of the law; that Congress alone has power to erect 
governments and protect the people. Yet we sit by 
and move no hand and raise no voice to effect what we 
declare to be the duty of Congress. It is a great dere- 
liction of duty. 

Stevens replied to the criticism that the committee 
had proposed no plan of reconstruction. He recounted 
the effort he had made for his own bill that had been 
under discussion for three weeks. He had wished that 
bill perfected in the House, but his wish had been de- 
fiantly refused. He had sought to save the bill from 
death in the Committee and he thought it uncivil, un- 
just, and indecent not to attempt to amend it and make 
it better. Our vigorous friend from Ohio [Bingham] 
had assured us that the bill would come back from the 
committee fresh and blooming, but it had not come, 
and he [Stevens] had accepted a position that he could 
not help. He had labored upon his bill, in conjunc- 
tion with committees of loyal men from the South, had 
altered and realtered it, written and rewritten it sev- 
eral times. He had warned the House that if that 
bill should go back to the committee, it must die. 
This bill that now comes in lieu of it encounters the 
same obstacles in precisely the same spirit. There are 
in it some words difficult to spell ; adverbs are im- 
properly placed ; gentlemen object to its particles and 
its articles; and " my friend from Ohio [Bingham] de- 
clared this morning with proper exultation that he had 



4 ;o THE LIFE OF THADDEUS STEVENS 

succeeded in passing through this House a bill which 
uses the word ' states ' precisely as the President uses 
it in his theory as to the right of admission of those 
claiming to represent the rebel states." 

That which most aroused the fighting spirit and op- 
position of Stevens was what he denounced as the 
" pertinacious determination " of the conservative Re- 
publicans to make the fourteenth amendment a final 
condition of readmission and reunion. That was the 
purpose, chiefly, of the Blaine amendment. Stevens 
denounced it as a " step toward universal amnesty and 
universal Andy Johnsonism, — it lets in a vast num- 
ber of rebels and shuts out nobody." "If this Con- 
gress so decides, it will give me great pleasure to join 
in the io triumphe of the gentleman from Ohio in 
leading this House, possibly by forbidden paths, into 
the sheepfold, or the goatfold, of the President." x 

Stevens felt that the fight in which he was engaged 
was one for justice and liberty. " If, sir," he said, 
" I ought presume upon my age, without claiming any 
of the wisdom of Nestor, I would suggest to the young 
gentlemen around me, that the deeds of this burning 
crisis, of this solemn day, of this thrilling moment, 
will cast their shadows far into the future, and will 
make their impress upon the annals of our history, and 
that we shall appear upon the bright pages of that his- 

1 In this discussion Mr. Stevens incidentally remarked that 
he had no respect for the fourteenth amendment, by which he 
meant, obviously, as a final basis for reconstruction. Though 
that amendment was not as Stevens had sought to make it, as 
we have seen, yet it was, in the main, in harmony with his 
principles and purposes. He wished to impose more as a basis 
for readmission, and was especially unwilling for Congress to 
be tied up to this amendment in advance as a finality in recon- 
struction. 



MILITARY RECONSTRUCTION 471 

tory, just in so far as we cordially, without guile, with- 
out bickering, without small criticisms, lend our aid 
to promote the great cause of humanity and universal 
liberty." * 

He referred to the spirit of forgiveness and mercy 
so much enunciated by the opposition. But he 
thought that when generosity and benevolence, " the 
noblest qualities of our nature," are " squandered upon 
vagabonds and thieves," no respect could be had from 
any quarter. The forgiveness of the gospel refers to 
private offenses, " where men can well forgive their 
enemies and smother their feeling of revenge without 
injury to anybody." But that has nothing to do with 
municipal punishment, with " political sanction of po- 
litical crimes." When nations pass sentence and de- 
cree confiscation for crimes unrepented, there is no 
question of malignity. 

" When the judge sentences the convict he has no ani- 
mosity. When the hangman executes the culprit he rather 
pities than hates him. Cruelty does not belong to their vo- 
cabulary. Gentlemen mistake, therefore, when they make 
these appeals to us in the name of humanity. They, sir, 
who while preaching this doctrine are hugging and caress- 
ing those whose hands are red and whose garments are 
dripping with the blood of our and their murdered kinsmen, 
are covering themselves with indelible stains which all the 
waters of the Nile can not wash out." 2 

Following this speech the motion to refer the bill 
to the Judiciary Committee was defeated and the bill 
was put upon its passage. It passed the House by a 

1 Globe, Feb. 13, 1867, p. 1214. 

2 Globe, Feb. 13, 1867, p. 1214. 



472 THE LIFE OF THADDEUS STEVENS 

vote of one hundred and nine to fifty-five, twenty 
members being recorded as " not voting." 

Before making the motion to reconsider and to lay 
that motion on the table, in order to prevent recon- 
sideration, Stevens arose and with some exultation in- 
quired "if it is in order for me now to say that we 
endorse the language of good old Laertes that Heaven 
rules as yet and there are gods above? " * 

The bill had its first reading in the Senate the day 
it passed the House. There were pronounced dif- 
ferences of opinion among Republicans there, as there 
had been in the House, and it was apparent that un- 
less these were reconciled by some authoritative ac- 
tion on the part of the majority, debate would be 
continued unduly and no bill could be passed in the 
limited time. Accordingly, a caucus was held of the 
Republican Senators which agreed upon a substitute 
bill, and this was passed by the Senate after an all- 
night session at six o'clock Sunday morning, February 
17th. 

The first, four sections of the Senate bill were the 
same as the military bill of Stevens, except that the 
President instead of the General of the army was 
given the power to appoint the commandants of the 

1 Globe, p. 1215. Mr. Rhodes says of this occasion: 
" Stevens carried this bill through an unwilling' House ; a strong 
minority of his own party was opposed to it largely for the 
reason that pure military rule without any provision for its 
termination was unpalatable. He obtained his majority by sar- 
casm, taunts, dragooning and by cracking the party whip. 
There had been no such scene in Congress since Douglas car- 
ried his Kansas-Nebraska bill through the Senate. Bingham, 
a veteran ; Blaine, very adroit for a member serving his second 
term only, were unable to cope with the leader ; both voted with 
him on the passage of the bill." Hist, of U. S., Vol. VI, 
pp. 17, 18. 



MILITARY RECONSTRUCTION 473 

several military districts; it was deemed unconstitu- 
tional for Congress to deprive the President of his con- 
stitutional power as Commander-in-chief. But the 
Senate also inserted what was substantially the Bing- 
ham-Blaine amendment which had been voted down by 
the House. 1 This provided in the fifth section that 
when any one of the said rebel states should have 
formed a constitution in harmony with the Constitu- 
tion of the United States, — framed by a convention 
of delegates elected under manhood suffrage regard- 
less of race, color, or previous condition of servitude, 
excepting such as may be disfranchised for partici- 
pating in rebellion; and when the state constitution 
should provide for such manhood suffrage for the fu- 
ture ; and when the Constitution should have been 
ratified by a majority of qualified voters and submitted 
to and approved by Congress ; and when the state, by 
its legislature, should have ratified the fourteenth 
amendment and that amendment had become a part of 
the Constitution of the United States — then, after 
these conditions were fulfilled, the state should be de- 
clared entitled to be represented in Congress and its 
Senators and Representatives should be admitted upon 
their taking the " iron-clad " oath as required by law. 
Thereafter the military sections of the act were to be 
inoperative within the state. 

This was entirely a different bill from the one whose 
passage Stevens had secured in the House. Instead 
of a temporary bill designed to restore order under 
military rule until time could be had for perfecting a 
suitable scheme of restoration, the Senate prepared, 

1 Rhodes, VI, p. 19. 



474 THE LIFE OF THADDEUS STEVENS 

in a hurry, and offered to the country a final plan of 
reconstruction. 1 Stevens has suffered the fate of be- 
ing held up in history as being the chief sponsor and 
promoter of this scheme of forcing negro suffrage 
on the South by military rule. The scheme was not 
his, and, as on former occasions when the Senate had 
interfered with legislation that he had proposed, he 
resisted it with all his might. " The worst feature 
about the Reconstruction Acts," says Mr. Rhodes, 
" was not the military government. Honest govern- 
ment by American soldiers would have been better 
than negro rule forced on the South at the point of 
the bayonet, which was the actual result of this legis- 
lation." But it should be remembered that " negro 
suffrage was grafted in the military bill by the con- 
servative Republicans and was resisted by Stevens." 2 
True, Stevens was not prompted in this opposition 
by any motives of benevolence and mercy toward the 

1 In June, 1867, the Nation criticized Stevens for his public 
letter in which he called for an extra session of Congress to 
mend the defects in the Reconstruction Act which had been ex- 
posed by Attorney-General Stanberry. The Nation said this 
act should have been fully discussed, as that would have brought 
out its defects and its friends could have perfected it. Stevens, 
" old and experienced as he is, should learn the lesson of the 
mischievousness of the habit which he indulges in more than 
any one else, of checking and stifling debate on important meas- 
ures." Nation, June 20, 1867. This is said as if Stevens were 
responsible for pushing through this hurried and defective legis- 
lation. Exactly the opposite is true. He opposed it stoutly, for 
the very reason that there was not sufficient time to consider it. 
He had urged a general scheme of reconstruction on Congress 
for many months, but now that the last weeks of the Thirty-ninth 
Congress had come and nothing had been done, he sought "hon- 
est government by American soldiers," until the Fortieth Con- 
gress could digest a suitable scheme. The more conservative 
"safe and sane" Republicans should bear the chief burden of 
credit, or discredit, for this hurried legislation. 

2 Hist, of the U. S., VI, p. 29. 



MILITARY RECONSTRUCTION 475 

South. It may be said by his critics that any plan he 
would have consented to could only have been a worse 
one and that, in his Senate bill, he favored only what 
was bad and objected only to what was good. Let 
him be judged by the judgment that is his due. But 
it is essential that the record shall not be confused 
nor belied, and that responsibility for military recon- 
struction as it was finally consummated should rest 
where it belongs, and that record shows that it does 
not rest primarily upon Stevens. 

The Senate bill came up in the House on February 
18, 1867, the day after its passage by the Senate. As 
soon as it was read Stevens moved that the amend- 
ments of the Senate be not concurred in and he asked 
for a committee of conference. Stevens yielded a part 
of his time to Boutwell, of Massachusetts, and Stokes, 
of Tennessee, who spoke in opposition to the Senate 
plan, because by it reconstruction would be carried on 
under the agency of " disloyal " men. It provided for 
universal amnesty and universal suffrage. There was 
no discrimination in favor of the " loyal," and under 
this plan, since every rebel in the South was admitted 
to the ballot, the loyal men, white and black, would 
go under. 1 

Stevens then attacked the Senate amendments in a 
brief speech of his usual vigor. He regretted that 
the Senate had attempted the difficult task of attempt- 
ing civil government in the South. The House bill 
had not a word in it beyond a police regulation for pro- 
tection. The Senate has sent back a bill which raises 
the whole question in dispute, as to the best mode of 

1 Globe, p. 1316. 



476 THE LIFE OF THADDEUS STEVENS 

reconstruction by distant and future pledges., which 
this Congress has no authority to make and no power 
to execute. He objected to taking the management of 
these states from the General of the army and put- 
ting it in the hands of the President. " Our friends 
who love this bill love it now because the President is 
to execute it, as he has executed every law for the 
last two years, by the murder of Union men, and by 
despising Congress and flinging into our teeth all that 
we seek to have done. That seems to be the sweeten- 
ing ingredient in this bill for many of our friends 
around us." Stevens held to the constitutional au- 
thority of Congress to detail for particular service par- 
ticular officers of the army. 

Stevens' most strenuous objection was to the pro- 
vision of the new fifth section of the Senate bill, that 
which pledged the government " to all the traitors in 
rebeldom " that if they would do certain things they 
might " come into this House and act with us as loyal 
men." Appealing to the party instincts and inter- 
ests of his colleagues, he referred to " the impatience 
to bring in these chivalric gentlemen lest they should 
not be here in time to vote for the next President of 
the United States," and, therefore, there is to be 
grafted on a police bill a provision that will enable 
them to be here in time. He said he was willing to 
have them " come in as soon as they were fairly en- 
titled," but he did not profess to be very impatient 
to embrace them, and he was not anxious to see their 
votes cast along with others to control the next election 
of President and Vice-President. 

Stevens here took occasion to refer in an ironical 



MILITARY RECONSTRUCTION 477 

way to the idea which he had formerly combated, that 
a few loyal men might constitute a state for recon- 
struction purposes. " There was a time," he said, 
" when some people, and among them that good man 
who is now no more, carried, as I thought, the idea 
of reconstruction by loyal men rather to the extreme. 
The doctrine was once held that in these outlawed 
communities of robbers, traitors, and murderers, so 
far as the real state was concerned, it consisted of 
the ' loyal men ' of the community and that the oth- 
ers counted for nothing. I do not say that I hold 
this doctrine, not being myself an extreme man [laugh- 
ter] , but it was held by gentlemen all around me and it 
was held by the late President of the United States. 
But now the doctrine seems to be that the state is 
composed of loyal men and traitors. We ignore 
wholly the disloyal element in all the states and are 
hurrying to introduce these disloyal men among us." 

It was Stevens' plan to have the Thirty-ninth Con- 
gress pass only his military bill and allow the more 
radical Fortieth Congress to deliberate on reconstruc- 
tion. He then hoped to secure the disfranchisement 
of the " rebels," the enfranchisement of the negroes, 
and a " moderate plan " of confiscation, and then to 
delay the restoration of the Southern States to their 
privileges within the Union until they were well ready 
to participate in governing the country. 

He would deem them " ready " when they were 
well under the control of men who were loyal to the 
Union and to the true principles of democratic equal- 
ity. He was not anxious to have these states ready 
to vote for President in 1868. Pie objected to " the 









478 THE LIFE OF THADDEUS STEVENS 

anxiety for universal amnesty." " Is there danger," 
he asked, " that somebody will be punished ? Is there 
any fear that this nation will wake from its lethargy 
and insist upon punishment by fine, by imprisonment, 
by confiscation, or that a spirit will be raised in this 
nation which sleeps only here and which no other na- 
tion ever before allowed to slumber?" It riled his 
spirit to see confiscated property of the United States 
given back to enrich rebel enemies; to see Unionists 
suffer poverty and deprivation, whose houses had been 
laid in waste, farms robbed and cattle taken, " while 
Wade Hampton and his black horse cavalry are to 
revel in their wealth, and traitors along the Mississippi 
valley are to enjoy their manors. 

" Sir, God helping me and I live, there shall be a 
question propounded to this House and to this na- 
tion, whether a portion of the debt shall not be paid 
by confiscated property of the rebels." 1 

When a vote was reached on the Senate bill, which 
Stevens felt forestalled and prevented his scheme, it 
was rejected by the House. 2 Stevens then carried a 
motion for a committee of conference, a result that 
was brought about " by a coalition of all the Demo- 
crats with a minority of extreme Republicans." 3 

The Senate refused a conference and insisted upon 
its bill. Thus with only thirteen days of the session 
remaining, during ten of which the President was cer- 
tain to keep the bill before returning it with his veto, 
it looked as if, by a disagreement of Republicans, re- 

1 Globe, Feb. 18, 1867. 

2 By a vote of 98 to 73, Globe, Feb. 19, 1867, p. 1340. 

3 Blaine, Twenty Years, II, p. 260. 



MILITARY RECONSTRUCTION 479 

construction would be defeated or be left over to the 
Fortieth Congress. " Under the pressure of this fear," 
says Mr. Blaine, " Republican differences were ad- 
justed, and the Senate and House found common 
ground to stand upon by adding two amendments to 
the bill as the Senate had framed it." One of these 
was that of Mr. Wilson, of Iowa, which provided that 
those excluded from office by the fourteenth amend- 
ment should also be excluded from voting for, or act- 
ing as, delegates to the state constitutional conven- 
tions. 1 The other amendments, offered by Mr. Shella- 
barger, of Ohio, provided that until the people of the 
rebel states should be admitted to representation in 
Congress, any civil government therein should be con- 
sidered as provisional only and " in all respects subject 
to the paramount authority of the United States at 
any time to abolish, modify, control or supersede the 
same." No person was to be allowed to hold any 
office under this provisional state government who was 
disqualified by the fourteenth amendment, and none 
was to be allowed to vote except those specified and 
described under the provisions of this act. 

While these amendments were before the House, 
the Democrats filibustered for delay. Stevens acted 
as a spectator, not voting on their dilatory motions. 
Stevens voted for the Wilson-Shellabarger amend- 
ments, the latter being added as an additional section 
of the bill, and he then voted for the passage of the 
bill so amended. 2 

1 Globe, Feb. 19, 1867, p. 1356. 

2 The record hardly bears out the assertion that Stevens 
" filibustered " on this occasion to defeat this measure. He 
merely gave the consent of his silence. The Nation says that 



4 8o THE LIFE OF THADDEUS STEVENS 

The concurrence of the House in the Senate bill 
was also promoted by the insertion in the Army Ap- 
propriation Bill of a provision depriving the President 
of all power to interfere with the execution of the Re- 
construction Act. This was done by a clause in the 
appropriation bill providing that all military orders 
and instructions should be issued through the Gen- 
eral of the army (General Grant), whose headquarters 
should be at Washington, and that all other orders 
should be null and void. Power was denied to the 
President to remove, suspend, or relieve the General 
from command, or assign him to duty elsewhere, — a 
palpable violation of the constitutional provision which 
makes the President the Commander-in-chief of the 
army. 

The military bill passed the House on February 20, 
1867. Stevens consented to it, but he was by no 
means satisfied. He was not its author, nor its de- 
fender. He accepted the amended bill as the best 
that could be had at the time, but he regarded it as 
Sumner characterized it in the Senate, as containing 

Stevens " filibustered in vain in favor of his own scheme of 
military government without limit or qualification," and refers 
to " the combination of Mr. Stevens with the Democratic mem- 
bers to secure the defeat of the military bill." The editor says 
that Stevens, believing that every delay in reconstruction will 
make the final settlement more severe upon the South, " will- 
ingly accepts all the aid he can get from the wise (?) poli- 
ticians like Mr. Le Blond who oppose him in principle but help 
him in practise." 

The Notion was a strong supporter of the reconstruction meas- 
ures as they were finally passed. New York Nation, Feb. 21, 
28, 1867. No doubt Stevens could have defeated the measure if, 
instead of being a silent onlooker, he had asserted himself to 
arouse radical opposition while the advocates of the Senate bill 
were arranging compromise amendments that would placate and 
satisfy the radical contention. 



MILITARY RECONSTRUCTION 481 

much that is good, but as " a very hasty and crude act 
of legislation," and as " coming far short of what a 
patriotic Congress ought to supply for the safety of 
the republic." 1 

The Senate passed the amended bill in a night ses- 
sion, the same day that it passed the House. John- 
son held it for the constitutional limit of ten days be- 
fore returning it to the House with his veto. His veto 
came in on Saturday afternoon of March 2nd. The 
Thirty-ninth Congress was to expire at noon Monday, 
March 4th. 2 

Upon the reading of the veto message, Stevens im- 
mediately moved that the House consider the ques- 
tion whether it would pass the bill notwithstanding the 
objections of the President. Eldridge, of Wisconsin, 
in the minute of time allowed for protest, recognizing 
that it was not within the physical power of the minor- 
ity to defeat the bill by filibustering, denounced it as 
" a dissolution of the Union." Le Blond called it " the 
death-knell of republican liberty upon this continent," 
and he asserted that if enough numbers would stand 
with him he would never consent to the passage of the 
bill " unless overpowered by physical exhaustion or re- 
strained by the rules of the House." Mr. Finck again 
denounced the bill as " a monstrous scheme to sub- 

1 Globe, Feb. 20, 1867, p. 1626. 

2 Dewitt must be mistaken in his assertion that Johnson 
might have defeated the Reconstruction Act by the absolute 
negative of his pocket veto but that he took no advantage of 
the opportunity. Impeachment of Johnson, p. 203. The bill 
passed the Senate on February 20th, twelve days before the ex- 
piration of the Thirty-ninth Congress. Johnson conceded noth- 
ing to his opponents in the partisan game, nor was he disposed to 
agree with his adversary quickly, from fear of a more sweeping 
and drastic measure. 



482 THE LIFE OF THADDEUS STEVENS 

vert constitutional government in this country," and 
he said he would aid every legitimate parliamentary 
effort for its defeat. 

Mr. Thayer expressed the opinion that the House 
had had enough of this entertainment, and Mr. Stev- 
ens took the floor to bring the bill to its passage. He 
said that he had listened with patience to the gentle- 
men; that he would not be discourteous, for he was 
" aware of the melancholy feelings with which they 
were approaching this funeral of the nation, amid a 
difference of opinion among the mourners to an ex- 
tent that we can not expect to harmonize." 

Stevens then called upon Blaine to offer a motion 
for a suspension of the rules. The rules were sus- 
pended and the bill was passed by the House by a vote 
of one hundred and thirty-five to forty-eight, amid 
applause on the floor and in the galleries. The Senate 
passed the bill over the President's veto on the same 
day by a vote of thirty-eight to ten, and the Military 
Reconstruction Act became a law. 

This act has been frequently referred to as one of 
the most unjust and direful that ever passed the Ameri- 
can Congress, and the odium that has been held to 
attach to it has been heaped chiefly upon the head of 
Thaddeus Stevens, as if he alone of all men was re- 
sponsible for it. The act has been denounced as a 
personal expression of Stevens' hatred and vindic- 
tiveness toward the South. His record for vindictive- 
ness is bad enough, and it is not improbable that his de- 
termined purpose to punish the South would have 
wrought something worse than this military bill into 
the legislation of his country could he have had his 



MILITARY RECONSTRUCTION 483 

way. But it is absurd to place upon Stevens alone 
these evil aspects of reconstruction. True, he holds 
a preeminence for his fierce language of denunciation 
toward slaveholders and the leaders of the Rebellion. 
But history can accord him no monopoly on the spirit 
of sectional hatred, begotten of war, no monopoly on 
the desire to deprive the ex-Confederates of political 
power and to punish them for the wrongs and suf- 
ferings that war entailed. That spirit and desire were 
all but universal in the ruling party of the North. The 
minority party was so impotent as to be negligible. 
It should be remembered that this legislation came into 
being at a time when the vindictive passions of war 
were shared by all, and it is likely that sectional hatred 
was as general and positive in the South as in the 
North. What the South would have done with Stev- 
ens and his fellow-radicals if the tables had been 
turned, no one has yet attempted to set forth. It is 
not likely that " Old Thad " and his " abolition co- 
horts " would have been the objects of brotherly affec- 
tion, to be restored quickly to equal power in a slave- 
holders' Union which " traitorous abolitionists " had 
failed in their attempt to destroy. 1 

1 " It is probable tbat since time began there has never been an 
example of the hatred of one people for another so measure- 
less in degree, so unfathomable in depth, so utterly groundless 
in fact, as the hatred of the people of the South for the people 
of the North. There was a spirit of malignant vindictiveness, 
the offspring of hatred." Southern Union Refugee in Open Let- 
ter to President Lincoln, 1S63. This is but one testimony of 
many that might be adduced to show that the passions of hatred 
were at least as strong in the South as in the North and that 
Stevens' utterances and policy but reflected the common temper 
of the country so far as unbrotherly feeling was concerned. 
When a great and gentle spirit like Phillips Brooks could speak 
as he did soon after the death of Lincoln, one may understand, 
to a degree, how the Civil War had wrought upon the hateful 



484 THE LIFE OF THADDEUS STEVENS 

The responsibility for this bill, which, as we have 
shown from the record, Stevens denounced and sought 
to defeat, should rest with the Republican leaders of 
the Senate, with the majority that passed it in both 
houses of Congress, as well as with the people of the 
North who besought its enactment and who backed 
the measure with an overwhelming body of public 
opinion. Stevens did not arouse this spirit of vin- 
dictiveness ; he merely shared and expressed to an ex- 
ceptional degree what was indulged by all. 

It is equally unjust to say that Stevens' declarations 
on Southern conditions were " prompted only by hate 
and revenge " and were " entitled to no credence." * 
His declarations on that point (not in support of this 
bill but of his own temporary military bill) were the 
declarations of his party majority. His opinions and 
expressions on this point were shared by his col- 
leagues, by their constituencies in the North, and by 
the enlightened organs of the public will. They were 
the declarations of Wilson, Sumner, Wade, Sherman 
and Fessenden in the forum; they were the declara- 
tions of Generals Howard, Thomas, Sheridan, Sick- 
les and other commanders in the field; they were the 
declarations of men like Carl Schurz, George William 
Curtis, James Russell Lowell, Joseph Medill, and other 

passions and resentment of noble men. " I know not," said 
Brooks, " how the crime of him who shoots at law and liberty in 
the crowded glare of a great theater differs from theirs who 
have leveled their aim at the same great beings from behind a 
thousand ambuscades and on a hundred battle-fields of this long 
war. Every general in the field and every false citizen who 
has plotted and labored to destroy the lives of our soldiers is 
brother to him who did this deed." Brooks' Sermon on Lincoln, 
1865. 
1 Rhodes, VI, p. 24. 



MILITARY RECONSTRUCTION 485 

leaders of Northern public opinion at the time. These 
men voted, or urged others to vote, to sustain this meas- 
ure, and, along with Stevens, they asserted that it 
was justified by the deplorable and unbearable con- 
ditions in the South. 1 

Radicalism was popular, not odious. The people 
were so anxious to have the ex-Confederates deprived 
of all political power and reduced to impotence, that 
they were ready to resort to more drastic means than 
their more timid representatives in Congress seemed 
willing to allow. The New York Nation described 
conditions in the South as thoroughly unsound. Ac- 
cording to its representation, law was systematically 
perverted into oppression and so unblushingly over- 
ridden that it was sheer mockery to refer any loyal 
man to an average Southern court for justice; the 
Johnson governments were founded by military power 
and had their origin in usurpation ; their " course had 
been atrocious and wicked " and the military bill of 
Congress deserved hearty sympathy. Reorganization 
of the South " should never be entrusted to men who 
have shown such malignity and bigotry as the major- 
ity of Southern officials." 2 

This is entirely in harmony with what Stevens was 
in the habit of saying and it may serve as one of a 
thousand worthy witnesses to show that Stevens' " vin- 
dictive and vengeful " language was not exceptional. 
The whole sad truth was that reconstruction had to be 

1 One has only to read the testimony coming from the mili- 
tary commanders in the South and the files of the New York 
Nation, Harper's Weekly and the Atlantic Monthly, not to men- 
tion the more distinctly partisan journals, to appreciate the 
truth of this statement. 

2 Nation, Feb. 21, 1867. 



4 86 THE LIFE OF THADDEUS STEVENS 

accomplished amid sectional hatred, bitterness, and an- 
tagonism. The spirit of cooperation and fraternal 
regard did not exist ; the natural and inevitable out- 
come was the attempted subjection of one section to 
the other which a successful war would ordinarily im- 
ply. One of the terms imposed — universal suffrage 
for the negro in his unpreparedness — was, no doubt, 
unwise. But the responsibility for that lies not alone 
with one man nor with one section. It was Stevens' 
desire originally to carry suffrage gradually by the 
consent of the Southern States and to accompany it 
with education. The resistance and temper of the 
South brought, by national power, an act of enfran- 
chisement which it will take more than a generation 
to make really effective. 

The reconstruction measures are often criticized as 
if, at the time, the conditions of the country were 
normal. Congress is denounced for " brutally striking 
down state governments," as if Johnson's military 
creations were legal states. The problem is spoken 
of as if the Rebellion might have been treated as a com- 
mon riot, or only as an insurrection against authority, 
and that, the disorderly citizens having yielded, every- 
thing could now go on as it was before. The true 
state of the case was, and the men of the time who 
had made great sacrifices to preserve the Union felt 
it most deeply, that the difference between North and 
South in war and reconstruction is to be looked upon 
as a great life and death struggle. It was a great 
public war between two contending powers, and it was 
nothing short of the ridiculous and the absurd to sup- 
pose that the victors after such a conflict should be 



MILITARY RECONSTRUCTION 487 

satisfied with things as they were before the conflict 
began. Great conflicting principles and forces in civ- 
ilization were disputing for mastery. It was a strug- 
gle that went deeper than parties. It was the pur- 
pose of the nation, and Stevens' leadership but rep- 
resented that firm unflinching resolution, to plant the 
government anew upon the principles of the Declara- 
tion of Independence. 

The nation's conscience had the conviction that 
atonement had to be made for a century of injustice 
and that the honor and safety of the future demanded 
the establishment of a truer and broader democracy, 
a democracy as wide as the human race. This ideal- 
ism of the Declaration of Independence then so fer- 
vently revived, was not to be realized immediately ; 
but it was the nation's determination that no by-ques- 
tions, no fallacies of generosity to the vanquished, 
should turn it aside from the one fixed purpose it had 
at heart, — that the war should not have been in vain ; 
that the Slave States, when they returned to the Union, 
should return on suitable terms, terms by which politi- 
cal rights and powers should be distributed on prin- 
ciples that were righteous and true. Such were the 
motives and purposes of reconstruction by which its 
ablest sponsors, like Thaddeus Stevens, should be 
judged. 

Stevens has been represented as utterly regardless 
of the restraints of the Constitution and as seeking to 
impose military rule and negro suffrage upon the 
South merely to humiliate and punish a proud and 
worthy people. The criticism expresses only a narrow 
and temporizing view of his conduct. Perhaps he 



4 88 THE LIFE OF THADDEUS STEVENS 

manifested to an exceptional degree the unseemly 
qualities of resentment and revenge, as he did many 
of the worthier qualities of human nature. But to 
Stevens equal suffrage to all was a measure of justice, 
not of punishment. It is more reasonable to suppose 
that he was primarily inspired by nobler motives, the 
motives suggested in the deep-seated desire to secure 
the political justice and regeneration to which we have 
referred. 

To secure civil and political justice for all men 
alike, regardless of race, color, or previous condition 
of servitude, — this was the permanent cause involved 
in reconstruction. Stevens represented that cause. 
To that end he would have remodeled the Constitution 
of his country in whatever way he thought best cal- 
culated to uproot the last vestige of human slavery, 
and to establish in America a race-wide democracy of 
equal rights. True, he entertained no reverence for 
the Constitution as a complete and inspired instrument 
needing no change. He is to be admired greatly and 
commended for that. That idolatrous conception of 
our Constitution which has been so sedulously culti- 
vated in this country is an incredible stupidity, tending 
to discourage all independence of political thought. 
To him the Constitution was a means, not an end. He 
would adapt it to the nation's needs and use it as an 
instrument, not to hamper, but to promote the prog- 
ress and freedom of the race. He sought to make it 
an instrument of government under which no oppres- 
sion could find a resting place. He was therefore, 
and most rightly, not satisfied with the Constitution 
of 1787. He sought a nearer approach to the true 



MILITARY RECONSTRUCTION 489 

principles of liberty than our fathers had reached. He 
was, indeed, guilty of the great audacity of believing 
that we could do much better for human liberty than 
our fathers had done. Who is there to reproach him 
for such faith ? He wished to establish a nation over 
a continent under laws of supreme unvarying char- 
acter, not intending that one part of the nation should 
be governed by one set of laws, another by another. 
The principles applying to the dwellers on the Penob- 
scot should apply to those on the Susquehanna and the 
Savannah, with inalienable rights and perfect liberty 
for all. 

It was this motive and these principles, not vindic- 
tive hate, that led Stevens to favor civil liberty and 
manhood suffrage for all, black as well as white. No 
man, as he believed, could sell his liberty or his priv- 
ileges for a price. No contract nor instrument of gov- 
ernment, no matter how solemn, no matter how hedged 
about by broad seals or stamped by legislative and ex- 
ecutive approval, — none of these things could alienate 
a man's liberties and rights. With a peculiar devotion 
he held that there were certain rights, privileges, and 
immunities that belonged to every being who had an 
immortal soul, none of which could be rightfully taken 
from him by any sort of arrangement with society or 
government. 

However inadequate the means he employed may 
have proved to bring about these political ideals ; how- 
ever the temporary enactments he promoted in recon- 
struction may have failed to bring about results that 
only time could work out, those who believe in democ- 
racy and the faith proclaimed by the founders of the 



49o THE LIFE OF THADDEUS STEVENS 

republic will continue to maintain that the underlying 
principles on which Stevens and his radical coadjutors 
sought to reconstruct the dissevered Union are not des- 
tined to ultimate failure nor decay. 



CHAPTER XIX 

IMPEACHMENT 

APOLITICAL condition existed in the country in 
which Congress and the President were at war. 
It was an impossible situation, and no constitution of 
government should ever permit it to exist. The Ex- 
ecutive and the Legislative had denounced one another 
beyond the limit of decency. The country had given 
to Congress such a majority as enabled that body to 
reduce the President to impotency, yet they were with- 
out an Executive of their own with a heart to carry 
out the nation's will. The President had obstinately 
determined that, wherever he could, he would defeat 
and circumvent, nag and annoy, the responsible leg- 
islative leaders, and he would go to the bounds of the 
law in opposition to the public will as expressed in 
Congress. It passeth knowledge to determine what 
reason can be urged in constitution-making or in state- 
craft for a constitutional system of government that 
makes possible for any length of time such a rela- 
tionship between the executive and the legislative 
branches of government. It is well known that if the 
framers of our Constitution had understood the mod- 
ern responsible Cabinet, or if they could have foreseen 
the party character and the great political power of the 
American presidency they would not have made the 
mistake of setting such a disjointed and jarring rela- 

•491 



492 THE LIFE OF THADDEUS STEVENS 

tionship between the legislative and executive branches 
of government. 

The movement for the removal of Andrew John- 
son found its cause in the politics of the time. His 
impeachment was essentially a political issue, as Stev- 
ens very frankly declared, with his usual habit of bold 
avowal and unconcealment. Johnson's case was de- 
cided, however, not as a political question but as a 
purely legal question, by a few lawyers in the United 
States Senate who deemed themselves to be sitting as 
judges in a purely criminal case. What a President 
may do to harm his country, short of proving himself 
a criminal, is beyond measure. If Johnson had stolen 
a chicken, as one of the political managers at his trial 
suggested, he could have been impeached and removed. 
But to throw himself athwart the national will and to 
circumvent important political ends upon which the 
nation has determined, while yet keeping within the 
limits of the criminal law, — in such a case there is 
operative now no method of impeachment, or recall, 
within the sovereign power of the people. 

It may reasonably be regretted, especially by those 
who wish to democratize the American government, 
as Stevens did, that such a narrow view of the im- 
peaching powers prevailed in the historic trial of An- 
drew Johnson. It is well known that President Jef- 
ferson, in his day, desired to restrain the federalist 
judges by an easier process of impeachment and to 
accomplish their removal by the united vote of the two 
houses, somewhat after the present English method. 
If, as the Jeffersonian Republicans desired and at- 
tempted, impeachment could have been used in the 



IMPEACHMENT 493 

first place under Jefferson by a legislative process and 
for a public purpose, to impeach a biased, cantanker- 
ous, and partisan judge like Justice Chase, who was ut- 
terly unfit to sit upon the bench; and if, in the second 
important instance in our history, the impeachment 
power could have been successfully employed as a 
political weapon to remove a President who, if not 
utterly unfit for his place, was not only an accident in 
his office but an incumbrance and obstruction to the ex- 
ercise of popular power, — then the precedents might 
have so vitalized the impeaching powers that it would 
now be possible to use them, in a measure, as a means 
of promoting responsible parliamentary government 
in America. But legalism and the undemocratic re- 
strictions of a written constitution have determined 
otherwise. And now into whatever indignation and 
anger a President may bring the people, however in- 
ane, or supine, or incompetent and perverse he may be, 
there is nought for the nation to do, fret and fume as 
it may, but to await the expiration of his four years' 
term. If that had been the precedent and the law 
for the century gone by, Stevens would have set an- 
other precedent for the centuries to come. 

It is the custom to lift up voice and hands in dis- 
approval of allowing such scope to unrestrained pop- 
ular power. The masses would be so controlled, it is 
said, by partisan passion and popular excesses as to 
make such power in the hands of the representatives 
of the people altogether too dangerous. But those 
who believe in democratic government for America 
are quite inclined to believe that it would be far safer 
to allow the people to remove, or recall, their Presi- 



494 THE LIFE OF THADDEUS STEVENS 

dent by a two-thirds adverse vote (if not by a major- 
ity) in both houses of Congress, than to try to get on 
under a cumbersome and rigid Constitution that was 
instituted, in the first place, and has since been con- 
stantly applied, to restrain the people from working 
out their will in governmental law and administration. 
Impeachment may be revived for a time under popular 
pressure, or it may be threatened occasionally against 
judicial offenders for political reasons, but it is safe to 
say that it will never again be revived to harm or 
restrain a President in the performance, or misper- 
formance of his public duties. 

It was with some such ideas of responsible demo- 
cratic government as these that Stevens, leading his 
party colleagues, undertook the impeachment of An- 
drew Johnson. Stevens realized that some of the 
senatorial judges would have to be convinced by purely 
judicial considerations, and he sought, in part, to pre- 
sent his cause with that in view. But he also deemed 
it proper, from the governmental considerations that 
I have partly adduced, to appeal to partisanship to 
secure votes from his party colleagues, for the sake 
of what he deemed worthy political and public ends. 
It is but fair to judge his course in impeachment with 
these considerations in mind. 

A proposition to impeach the President for high 
crimes and misdemeanors had been pending in the 
House for more than a year before that body came to 
the point of deciding in favor of this drastic policy. 
In June, 1867, the Judiciary Committee of the House 
was instructed to inquire into the conduct of Johnson, 
to see if he were guilty of offenses that were impeach- 



IMPEACHMENT 495 

able under the Constitution. In the closing days of 
the Thirty-ninth Congress, the committee reported 
that there was enough evidence to justify the continu- 
ance of the investigation by the incoming Fortieth Con- 
gress. In June, 1867, the majority of the committee 
reported that there was not sufficient ground for im- 
peachment, but it was decided to have the committee 
continue the search for evidence. 

During the recess of Congress from July to Novem- 
ber, 1867, Johnson removed General Sheridan from 
the military department of Louisiana and suspended 
Secretary Stanton, head of the war department, and 
these events, it appears, were influential in bringing a 
majority of the committee to support the policy of 
impeachment. George S. Bout well, of Massachusetts, 
made a report in the House to this effect on Novem- 
ber 25, 1867; but two of the Republican members of 
the committee were still opposed to the policy of im- 
peachment and the proposal was rejected by the House 
by a vote of one hundred and eight to fifty-seven, 
sixty-seven Republicans and all the Democrats voting 
against the policy. 

In December, the Senate refused to sustain the rea- 
sons which the President submitted to that body for 
the removal of Stanton. Thereupon, General Grant, 
who had been acting as Secretary of War ad interim, 
left the office and Stanton again took up its duties. 
This action of General Grant in allowing Stanton to 
again take possession of the war office angered John- 
son and he accused Grant of a breach of promise. He 
asserted that Grant had promised to hold the office 
and force Stanton to resort to judicial proceedings in 



496 THE LIFE OF THADDEUS STEVENS 

his efforts to regain possession. This process would 
have tested in the courts the constitutionality of the 
Tenure of Office Act and it might have resulted in its 
judicial nullification. A quarrel therefore resulted be- 
tween the President and the Commander of the army 
that had considerable results in the politics of the 
times. If the President had had a little tact and more 
affability, he might have secured the powerful influ- 
ence of Grant in the fight against Stanton and Con- 
gress. 

Stanton now remained in the Cabinet, not as a Sec- 
retary of the President, but as a Secretary of Con- 
gress ; but while attending to the routine duties of the 
office he did not attend the Cabinet meetings. 

Johnson was advised to allow Stanton to retain his 
office, to perform its clerical and legal duties, while 
the President and his advisers could afford to abide 
their time. While Stanton's continuance in the of- 
fice was an offense to the Executive, he could not be 
seriously obstructive nor injurious, and the country 
would understand that responsibility for his presence 
there rested with the Senate and not with the Presi- 
dent, and it was believed that the congressional party 
would not find Stanton a popular issue. 

Disregarding this advice, Johnson, on February 21, 
1868, issued a peremptory order removing Stanton 
from the office as Secretary of War, and he appointed 
Lorenzo B. Thomas Secretary ad interim. Johnson 
held that he had the right to get rid of Stanton. To 
accomplish this he intended to resort to judicial pro- 
ceedings if necessary, while if the Senate refused to 
concur in his removal, the Secretarv might have re- 



IMPEACHMENT 497 

sort to the courts to test his right. In either case 
the President would have his right to a harmonious 
Cabinet tested by the laws. Stanton refused to sur- 
render the office to Thomas, denounced as illegal all 
orders issuing from Thomas as Secretary of War, and 
instructed generals of the army to pay no respect to 
such orders. Upon receiving reports of these facts, 
Johnson again instructed Thomas to take charge of the 
office and perform its duties. 

The Senate was notified of these proceedings by 
both the President and Stanton. The Senate went 
into an executive session which lasted for seven 
hours, in the course of which it was resolved, " that 
under the Constitution and the laws the President 
had no power to remove the Secretary of War, and 
to designate any other officer to perform the duties 
of that office ad interim." Secretary Stanton, having 
heard that Thomas had threatened to take possession 
of the war office by force, had a warrant issued for 
Thomas's arrest, and before Thomas had break- 
fasted next morning he was arrested and brought into 
court. Thomas, having been released on bail, pre- 
sented himself at Stanton's office and in the presence 
of a number of gentlemen, who, with Stanton, had 
been holding possession of the office during the night, 
he demanded that Stanton surrender possession. A 
serio-comic colloquy followed between the two claim- 
ants of the office, Stanton ordering Thomas out, 
Thomas refusing to go, and each claiming the right 
to perform the functions of the office. 

On February 21, 1868, the House, having received 
the news from Stanton of the attempt to remove him, 



498 THE LIFE OF THADDEUS STEVENS 

was now in a state of mind for the impeachment pro- 
posal. On February 10, 1868, on motion of Mr. 
Stevens, the evidence taken by the Judiciary Commit- 
tee had been transferred to the Reconstruction Com- 
mittee, and the latter committee thereafter had charge 
of the impeachment question. On February 13th, this 
committee had laid on the table by a vote of six to 
three a resolution to impeach. But now there was a 
different temper, and Covode's resolution, offered on 
the 21st, "that Andrew Johnson be impeached of 
high crimes and misdemeanors " was referred to the 
Committee on Reconstruction with full expectation 
that it would be reported favorably on the morrow. 
At twenty minutes past two of the next day (Feb. 
22nd), after a committee session in violation of the 
House rule which forbade committee meetings during 
the session without special leave, 1 the Reconstruction 
Committee, with Stevens at its head, came into the 
House, with a report recommending the adoption of 
the impeachment resolution. Stevens wished to take 
a vote without debate, saying as he offered the report 
that such a removal as Johnson had been guilty of, 
had always been considered a crime and misdemeanor 
and was never before practised. But the debate, or 
series of speeches, continued through the day and late 
into the night of the 22nd, and the discussion was re- 
sumed on Monday, the 24th, to the extent altogether 
of two hundred columns of the Globe. " There 
seemed," says Mr. Blaine, " to be an inordinate de- 
sire among gentlemen who had hitherto been con- 
servative on the question, as well as among those who 
1 Speech of Brooks, House, Feb. 22, 1868, Globe, p. 1336. 



IMPEACHMENT 499 

had been constantly in favor of impeachment, to place 
themselves on record against the President." x 

Brooks, a " Peace Democrat," or " Copperhead," 
during the war, protested against this final stage of 
the revolution for the destruction of the executive 
branch of the federal government. Bingham, of 
Ohio, expressed his sincere conviction that the Presi- 
dent had " violated the Constitution, his oath of of- 
fice, and the laws of the country." Farnsworth, of Il- 
linois, denounced Johnson as an " ungrateful, despic- 
able, besotted traitor, — a man who had turned his back 
upon the men who had elected him." 2 Kelley, of 
Pennsylvania, declared that the House was about to 
bring to trial " the great criminal of our age and coun- 
try, a man who for two years has been plotting with 
deliberate and bloody purpose the overthrow of the 
institutions of our country " ; and he thought it well 
for men to pause before speaking in defense of the 
" great criminal whom the American people arraign 
for thousands of crimes." 3 

John A Logan, of Illinois, who was afterward one 
of the impeachment managers, said : " Not one act 
has been passed by your Congress in the direction of 
peace, union, and prosperity, that he has not vetoed ; 
and when passed over his veto by a constitutional 
majority, that he has not attempted to prevent the ex- 
ecution of the same. He has advised and encouraged 
rebels and traitors in the South to disobey the laws ; 
he has removed military commanders that the recon- 

1 Twenty Years of Congress, II, p. 356. 
- Globe, 40th Congress, 2d Session, p. 1344. 
3 Globe, pp. 1347 and 1348. 



5 oo THE LIFE OF THADDEUS STEVENS 

struction laws might be disregarded and opposed. 
. . . He has not only insulted the nation by his con- 
duct as President, but he has disgraced that high of- 
fice in which he was placed by the death of his illus- 
trious predecessor." * 

It would be tiresome to quote further from this 
partisan and impassioned debate. Members spoke of 
the occasion as one of thrilling and transcendent im- 
portance, and the men of the minority professed to be- 
lieve that the future peace, honor and stability of the 
country, and everything held dear in our political life, 
hung upon the outcome. 2 

Stevens took twenty-five minutes to close the dis- 
cussion. He recognized the gravity of the issue in- 
volved and professed a desire to discuss it " in no 
partisan spirit, but with legal accuracy and impartial 
justice. The people desire no victim and they will 
endure no usurper." 

1 Globe, pp. 1352-1353- 

2 Niblack, Globe, p. 1398. 

That the Johnson party was as partisan as those leading- the 
impeachment may be seen from a passage in the Diary of 
Gideon Wells, a stanch protagonist of the President, which 
has recently appeared : " The impeachment is a deed of ex- 
treme partisanship, a deliberate conspiracy, involving all the 
moral guilt of treason for which the members would, if fairly 
tried, be liable to conviction and condemnation. . . . The Presi- 
dent is innocent of crime, his accusers and triers are culpably 
guilty. In this violent and vicious exercise of partyism. I see 
the liberties and happiness of the country and the stability _ of 
the government imperiled." Wells quotes, without suggestion 
of impropriety, Air. John Bigelow, as predicting that impeach- 
ment would fail from political motives, because the conservative 
Senators, "with the Chief Justice, look with repugnance and 
horror to the accession of Wade, and would prefer to continue 
the President. Unless, therefore, Wade will resign and allow 
some good conservative Senator to be made President of the 
Senate, he [Bigelow] thinks impeachment will be defeated." 
.-Ulan tic Mo., Oct., 1910. 



IMPEACHMENT 501 

To sustain impeachment Stevens held that it was 
not necessary to prove a crime as an indictable of- 
fense, or any act malum in sc. He held this to be a 
purely political proceeding, a remedy for malfeasance 
in office and to prevent its continuance. Beyond that 
it is not intended as a personal punishment for past 
offenses or future example. He held that the punish- 
ment resulting from impeachment has been substi- 
tuted by the framers of the Constitution for that of 
attainder, in order to prevent revenge and punishment 
from being inflicted upon political and personal 
enemies. The question should be treated as wholly 
political. If an officer abuse his trust or attempt to 
pervert it to improper purposes, whatever might be 
his motives, he becomes subject to impeachment and 
removal. He asserted that in no case of impeach- 
ment yet tried in this country has an attempt been 
made to prove the offense criminal and indictable. 

Stevens then proceeded to a review of the Tenure 
of Office Act and Johnson's alleged violations of the 
same. The President had taken an oath to execute 
the laws, and from that oath Johnson could not now 
plead exemption " on account of his condition at the 
time it was administered to him." He had sought to 
induce the General of the army to cooperate with 
him in the avowed purpose of preventing the opera- 
tion of the law. No matter which of the two, Grant 
or Johnson, in the question of veracity between them 
should be shown to be the man of truth and which 
the man of falsehood, the President by the statement 
of either, has " committed wilful perjury by refusing 
to take care that the laws should be faithfully exe- 



502 THE LIFE OF THADDEUS STEVENS 

cuted. Indeed to show the utter disregard of the 
laws of his country, we have only to return to his last 
annual message in which he proclaims to the public 
that the laws of Congress are unconstitutional and 
not binding on the people. Who, after that, can say 
that such a man is fit to occupy the executive chair, 
whose duty it is to inculcate obedience to those very 
laws and see that they are faithfully obeyed? Then 
the great beauty of this remedial and preventive pro- 
cess is dearly demonstrated. He is dull and blind 
who can not see its necessity and the beneficial pur- 
poses of the trial by impeachment." x 

Stevens, as might be expected, found cause against 
the President in his whole course of conduct in re- 
construction, because of his persistent usurpation of 
powers that belonged alone to Congress. When the 
territory of the South had been surrendered by the 
fortunes of war to the victorious arms of the Union, 
" no power but Congress had any right to say whether 
ever or when they should be admitted to the Union 
as states. Yet Andrew Johnson with unblushing 
hardihood, undertook to rule them by his own power 
alone ; to lead them into full communion with the 
Union ; direct them what governments to erect and 
what constitutions to adopt, and to send Senators 
and Representatives to Congress according to his in- 
structions. When admonished by expressed act of 
Congress, more than once repeated, he disregarded 
the warning, and continued his lawless usurpation. 
He is since known to have obstructed the reestablish- 
ment of those governments by the authority of Con- 

1 Globe, p. 1400. 



IMPEACHMENT 503 

gress and has advised the inhabitants to resist the 
legislation of Congress. In my judgment his conduct 
with regard to that transaction was a high-handed 
usurpation of power which ought long ago to have 
brought him to impeachment and trial and to have 
removed him from his position of great mischief. 
He has been lucky in thus far escaping through false 
logic and false law. But his acts, which will on the 
trial be shown to be atrocious, are open evidence of 
his wicked determination to subvert the laws of his 
country." 

" The sovereign power of the nation rests in Congress, 
who have been placed around the Executive as muniments 
to defend his rights, and as watchmen to enforce his obedi- 
ence to the law and the Constitution. His oath to obey the 
Constitution and our duty to compel him to do it are a 
tremendous obligation, heavier than was ever assumed by 
mortal rulers. We are to protect or to destroy the liberty 
and happiness of a mighty people, and to take care that they 
progress in civilization and defend themselves against every 
kind of tyranny. As we deal with the first great political 
malefaction so will be the result of our efforts to perpetuate 
the happiness and good government of the human race. 
The God of our fathers who inspired them with the thought 
of universal freedom, will hold us responsible for the noble 
institutions which they projected and expected us to carry 
out. This is not to be the temporary triumph of a political 
party, but is to endure in its consecmence until this whole 
continent shall be filled with a free and untrammeled people 
or shall be a nest of shrinking cowardly slaves." 1 

When Stevens closed, he called for the yeas and 
nays on the resolution. The Republicans voted yea, 

1 Globe, Feb. 24, 1868, p. 1400. 



504 THE LIFE OF THADDEUS STEVEXS 

and the Democrats nay, and impeachment was carried 
by a vote of one hundred and twenty-six to forty- 
seven. 

A committee of seven was appointed to draw up 
articles of impeachment. 1 

Stevens and Bingham were appointed a committee 
of two to inform the Senate of the action of the 
House. On the following day, February 25th, these 
noted leaders appeared at the bar of the Senate. Sum- 
ner, who was a witness of the scene, 2 describes Stev- 
ens as " looking the ideal Roman, with singular im- 
pressiveness, as if he were discharging a sad duty." 3 
Standing before the Senate in solemn mien, Stevens 
arraigned the President in words that thrilled and im- 
pressed the listener. " I doubt," said Sumner, " if 
words were ever delivered with more effect. — Who 
can forget his steady solemn utterance of this great 
arraignment? " 4 

" In the name of the House of Representatives 
and of all the people of the United States, we do im- 
peach Andrew Johnson, President of the United 
States, of high crimes and misdemeanors in office; 
and we further inform the Senate that the House 
of Representatives will, in due time, exhibit particu- 
lar articles of impeachment against him and make 
good the same ; and in their name we demand that the 

1 This committee consisted of Thaddeus Stevens, Benjamin 
F. Butler, John A. Logan, John A. Bingham, George S. Bout- 
well, George W. Julian and Hamilton Ward. Later, James F. 
Wilson, of Iowa, and Thomas Williams, of Pennsylvania, were 
substituted for Julian and Ward. 

2 Rhodes, VI, p. in. 

3 Storev's Sunnier. 

- 1 McCall. p. 336, Globe, Dec. 18, 1868. 



IMPEACHMENT 505 

Senate take order for the appearance of the same 
Andrew Johnson to answer said impeachment." 

The President of the Senate replied, " The Senate 
will take order in the premises." 

Stevens and Bingham then withdrew. 

Stevens was appointed one of the managers to pre- 
sent the case to the Senate. His physical condition 
prevented his taking the leading part in the " most im- 
portant trial of the century," for the sickness from 
which he never again fully rallied had now laid hold 
upon him. But his masterful will never allowed him 
to yield the pursuit of his object. When too weak to 
walk he was carried into the Senate chamber, and 
when too weak to talk " his fellow managers would 
read his words." 1 

On March 4th, the House managers appeared be- 
fore the bar of the Senate. The Speaker of the 
House took a seat beside that of the President pro 
tempore of the Senate. The sergeant-of-arms of the 
Senate made proclamation, " Hear ye ! Hear ye ! 
Hear ye! All persons commanded to keep silence, 
on pain of imprisonment, while the House of Repre- 
sentatives is exhibiting to the Senate of the United 
States articles of impeachment against Andrew John- 
son, President of the United States." 

The managers rose, and remained standing, with 
the exception of Mr. Stevens, who was physically un- 
able to do so, while Mr. Manager Bingham read the 
articles of impeachment. 2 

The President, in the eleven historic articles, was 
charged in much verbal reiteration with violating the 

1 McCall, p. 337. - Globe, p. 1647. 



506 THE LIFE OF THADDEUS STEVENS 

Tenure of Office Act, in deposing Stanton and ap- 
pointing Thomas; with violating the Anti-Conspiracy 
Act of July 31, 1 86 1, in conspiring with Thomas to 
expel Stanton and to seize the papers and property 
of the office; with violating the Reconstruction Act, 
of March 2, 1867, in directing that military orders 
should issue through others than the General of the 
army, as in his attempting to induce General Emory 
to take orders direct from the President in violation 
of said act ; and with committing " high crimes and 
misdemeanors " in his attitude toward and denuncia- 
tions of Congress; in his public efforts to bring that 
body " into disgrace, ridicule, hatred and contempt, 
and to impair and destroy the regard and respect of 
all the good people of the United States for the Con- 
gress thereof." 

The famous eleventh article, the one on which the 
crucial vote was taken and on which rested the chief 
hope of conviction, was drawn by Stevens. It 
charged that Johnson, " unmindful of his oath of office 
and in disregard of the Constitution, and the laws, did 
on the 1 6th day of August, 1866, in the City of Wash- 
ington, by a public speech, declare and affirm that the 
Thirty-ninth Congress was not a Congress of the 
United States, authorized by the Constitution to exer- 
cise legislative power, but on the contrary, was a Con- 
gress of only part of the states, thereby denying" and 
intending to deny that the legislation of said Congress 
was valid or obligatory upon him, except in so far as 
he saw fit to approve the same, and also thereby deny- 
ing and intending to deny the power of Congress to 
propose amendments to the Constitution of the United 



IMPEACHMENT '507 

States." The article also charged that Johnson had 
attempted to prevent the execution of the Tenure of 
Office Act. 

This article has been referred to as the " Omnibus 
Article," — a combination of all the charges into one 
article, " a trick to catch wavering Senators," " a 
nondescript and a curiosity in pleading." 1 Profes- 
sor Dunning characterizes it as a striking testimony 
to " the undiminished shrewdness and intellectual 
strength of the veteran whose physical forces were 
close to their ends." 2 

We can not here follow the trial in detail. Al- 
though there were able lawyers among the prosecu- 
ting managers, they were equaled, if not over matched, 
by the array of legal counselors that came to the 
President's defense. Among these were ex-At- 
torney General Stanbery; Benjamin R. Curtis, former 
Justice of the Supreme Court who had given the 
able dissenting opinion in the Dred Scott case; Wil- 
liam M. Evarts, of New York, W. S. Grosbeck, of 
Ohio, and Thomas A. R. Nelson, of Tennessee, five 
of the ablest lawyers of their day. 

Butler opened for the prosecution by a speech of 
three hours in which he sought to arouse the politi- 
cal antipathy of the Senators by reminding them of 
the President's " swing around the circle " of his buf- 
foonery in public, and of his repeated and coarse 
abuse of the congressional leaders. But Evarts broke 
the force of Butler's plea by quoting from the debates 
in the House to show that worse abuse than the Presi- 

1 Dewitt, p. 388, Rhodes, VI, p. 116, Senator Buckalew. 

2 Reconstruction, p. 106. 



508 THE LIFE OF THADDEUS STEVENS 

dent could be charged with had been irjdulged in by 
two of the Honorable Managers toward each other. 

Curtis made the chief speech for the defense, speak- 
ing during two days. He sought to divorce the case 
from its political bearings and reduce it entirely to a 
judicial character. In addressing the Chief Justice in 
his opening remarks, Curtis said he was there to 
speak to the Senate " sitting in its judicial capacity," 
and he affirmed that in such a case, " party spirit, po- 
litical schemes, foregone conclusions, outrageous 
biases, can have no fit operation." As a purely legal 
question it was not difficult for him to show that 
the question hung chiefly on whether Stanton's case 
came under the Tenure of Office Act. He held that 
it did not, that the Tenure of Office Act did not ap- 
ply to Stanton. But even if it did, Johnson had not 
violated it in seeking as he had done to have the case 
brought before the courts for a decision as to its 
constitutionality. He had not erected himself into a 
judicial court to decide that the act was unconsti- 
tutional and that, therefore, he would not enforce it. 
He claimed no such power. That would be to em- 
power the President, not only to veto a law, but to re- 
fuse all action under it after it had passed, and pre- 
vent a judicial decision from being made. But if a 
law were passed over the President's veto which he 
believed to be constitutional and that law affects the 
interests of third persons, those whose interests are 
affected must take care of them, raise questions con- 
cerning them. If such a law affects the public in- 
terests, the people must take care at the polls that it 



IMPEACHMENT 509 

is remedied in a constitutional way. But when such a 
law cuts off a power confided to the President by the 
people in their Constitution and the President alone 
can raise the question and cause a legal decision to be 
made as to which of the two branches of the gov- 
ernment is right, it remains to be decided by you, 
Senators, whether there is any violation of his duty 
when he takes the needful steps to raise that question 
and have it peacefully decided." * 

It is the judgment of Mr. Rhodes that Stevens 
made the ablest argument for the prosecution. He 
confined himself to his own article, the eleventh, and 
he never lost sight of his dear single purpose to secure 
the doubtful Senators. 2 

Stevens had carefully prepared his argument and 
he began to read it while standing at the Secretary's 
desk ; " but after proceeding a few minutes, being 
too feeble to stand, obtained permission to take a 
seat, and having read nearly a half an hour from his 
chair until his voice became almost too weak to be 
heard, handed over his manuscript to Mr. Manager 
Butler, who concluded the reading." 3 

One may well wonder as Mr. Rhodes says, 
" whether if Stevens had possessed his physical 
strength of two years previous, the result would have 
been different. Certainly the trial would have been 
conducted otherwise. He would have been chairman 
of the managers and dictated the line of procedure; 
but on account of his infirm health, the management 

1 Curtis's speech, cited in Rhodes' VI, pp. 123, 124. 

2 Rhodes, VI, p. 135. 

3 Globe, Supplement, p. 324. 



5io THE LIFE OF THADDEUS STEVENS 

of the trial fell to Butler, next to him the most adroit 
of the prosecutors." 1 

Stevens began by saying that experience had taught 
him that nothing was so prolix as ignorance, — there- 
fore he would be brief, that he would discuss only his 
own article, the eleventh, which, if proved, was suffi- 
cient to convict, and to bring about the only legitimate 
object of the impeachment, the removal of Johnson 
from office. He wished to speak in no spirit of ma- 
lignity or vituperation, but to argue the charges in a 
manner worthy of the high tribunal before which he 
stood and of the exalted position of the accused. 
" Whatever may be thought of his [Johnson's] char- 
acter or condition, he has been made respectable and 
his condition has been dignified by the action of his 
fellow citizens. Railing accusation, therefore, would 
ill become this occasion, this tribunal, or a proper sense 
of the position of those who discuss this question, on 
the one side or the other." 

When the charges against such a public servant 
accuse him of an attempt to betray the high trust con- 
fided in him and usurp the power of a whole people 
that he may become their ruler, it is " intensely inter- 
esting to millions of men, and should be discussed with 
a calm determination which nothing can divert and 
nothing can reduce to mockery. Such is the condi- 
tion of this great republic, as looked upon by an as- 
tonished and wondering world." 

Stevens denied that American impeachment was 
analogous to that under English law. In England 
high crimes might be punished through impeachment 

1 VI, p. 135- 



IMPEACHMENT 5 1 1 

by fine, imprisonment, or death. Our Constitution 
excluded all penalties beyond removal and disqualifi- 
cation, — the public safety, not the punishment of the 
officer, being the object in view. Hence impeachment 
applies to political offenses, and it is not necessary to 
allege or prove an indictable offense. If the defen- 
dant is shown to be abusing his official trust to the 
injury of the people, and if he persevere in this 
abuse, the true mode of dealing with him is to remove 
him by impeachment, if his continuance in office is 
deemed dangerous to the public welfare. No matter 
about the motive. " Mere mistake in intention, if so 
persevered in after proper warning as to bring mischief 
upon the community, is sufficient. 

" The only question to be considered is : Is the re- 
spondent violating the law ? — To obey the com- 
mands of the sovereign power of the nation, and to 
see that others should obey them, was his whole duty 
which he could not escape, and any attempt to do so 
would be in direct violation of his official oath ; in 
other words, a misprision of perjury. I accuse him 
in the name of the House of Representatives of hav- 
ing perpetrated that foul offense against the laws and 
interests of this country." 

Stevens then entered upon an extensive argument 
to prove that the Tenure of Office Act applied to 
Stanton and that Johnson was serving out Lincoln's 
term of office. He traced the plain facts in the case 
as they had occurred and showed that Johnson had 
violated the act by his efforts to prevent Stanton from 
performing the duties of the Secretary of War. " I 
disclaim all necessity," he said, " in a trial of im- 



5 i2 THE LIFE OF THADDEUS STEVENS 

peachment to prove the wicked or unlawful intention 
of the respondent, and it is unwise ever to aver it. 
In indictments you charge that the defendant ' insti- 
gated by the devil,' and so on ; and you might as 
well call on the prosecution to prove the presence, 
shape, and color of his Majesty as to call upon the 
managers in impeachment to prove intention. No 
corrupt or wicked motive need instigate the acts for 
which impeachment is brought. It is enough that 
they were official violations of law." 

The President had not the same right of removal 
that former Presidents had, since a law had been 
passed by Congress, after a stubborn controversy with 
the Executive, denying that right and prohibiting it in 
future, after the President had made issue on its 
constitutionality, and been defeated. Did he " take 
care that this law should be faithfully" executed? 
The plea of the President that he had removed 
Stanton in order to test the constitutionality of the 
Tenure of Office Law was not valid. That had been 
tested and decided by votes, twice given, of two- 
thirds of the Senators and Representatives in Con- 
gress. It was a law. No case had arisen to require 
judicial interposition. " Instead of enforcing the 
law he takes advantage of the name and funds of 
the United States to resist it, and to seduce others to 
resist it. He sought to induce the General in Chief of 
the army to aid him in an open avowed obstruction 
of the law as it stood unrepealed upon the statute 
books. A plain recital of the facts that are unde- 
nied is sufficient to prove this contention. The un- 
happy man is in this condition. He has declared 



IMPEACHMENT 513 

himself determined to obstruct that act; he has, by 
two several letters of authority, ordered Lorenzo 
Thomas to violate that law. — He must therefore 
either deny his own solemn declarations and falsify 
the testimony of General Grant and Lorenzo Thomas, 
or expect that verdict whose least punishment is re- 
moval from office." 

Referring to the angry correspondence between 
Grant and Johnson, he said that it was immaterial 
which of these gentlemen had lost his memory or told 
the truth " though who can hesitate to choose be- 
tween the words of a gallant soldier and the petti- 
fogging of a political trickster? The charge is that 
the President did attempt to prevent the due execution 
of the Tenure of Office Law by entangling the Gen- 
eral in the arrangement; and unless both the Presi- 
dent and the General have lost their memory and mis- 
taken the truth with regard to the promises with each 
other, then this charge is made out." 

The President's plea that he might disregard the 
law because of its unconstitutionality could not hold. 
Could he expect " a sufficient number of his tryers to 
pronounce that law unconstitutional and void, — those 
same tryers having passed upon its validity on sev- 
eral occasions " ? 

Discussing the charge of usurpation brought 
against the President, Stevens brought forward his 
conquered province theory, that the conquerors in the 
war might deal with the vanquished as to them might 
seem good, subject only to the laws of humanity, — 
" a doctrine as old as a Grotius and as fresh as the 
Dorr Rebellion. Neither the President nor the 



5T4 THE LIFE OF THADDEUS STEVENS 

Judiciary had any right to interfere, to dictate any 
terms, or to aid in reconstruction further than they 
were directed by the sovereign power, the Congress 
of the United States. Whoever, besides Congress, 
undertakes to creat new states or to rebuild old ones, 
and fix the condition of their citizenship and union, 
usurps powers which do not belong to him, and is 
dangerous according to the extent of his power and 
his pretensions. Andrew Johnson did usurp the 
legislative power of the nation by building new 
states and reconstructing this empire. He directed 
the defunct states to come forth and live by virtue of 
his breathing into them the breath of life. He told 
them what constitutions to form ; fixed the qualifica- 
tions of voters and office-holders; directed them to 
send forward members of Congress and to aid him in 
representing the nation. When Congress declared 
these doings unconstitutional and fixed a mode for 
the admission of this new territory into the nation, 
he proclaimed it unconstitutional and advised the peo- 
ple not to submit to it nor obey the commands of 
Congress. This seemed to Stevens the vital phase 
and real purpose of all of the President's misdemean- 
ors. The nation had been in conflict; the mutineers 
had laid down their arms; the laws were about to re- 
gain their accustomed sway ; old institutions were 
about to be reinstated on principles satisfactory to 
the conquerors, when "one of their inferior serv- 
ants, instigated by unholy ambition, sought to seize 
a portion of the territory according to the fashion 
of neighboring anarchies, and to convert a land of 
freedom into a land of slaves. The people spurned 



IMPEACHMENT 



5 l D 



the traitors and have put the chief of them upon 
trial and demand judgment upon his misconduct. He 
will be condemned and his sentence inflicted without 
turmoil, tumult, or bloodshed, and the nation will con- 
tinue its accustomed course of freedom and 
prosperity." 

The President was bound to execute the laws, not 
to obstruct them, nor advise their infraction. " Who 
was grieved by the Tenure of Office Bill that he was 
authorized to use the name and the funds of the 
government to relieve? 

"If he were not willing to execute the laws passed 
by the American Congress and unrepealed, let him re- 
sign the office which was thrown upon him by a hor- 
rible convulsion and retire to his village obscurity. 
Let him not be so swollen by pride and arrogance, 
which sprang from the deep misfortune of this coun- 
try, as to attempt an entire revolution of its internal 
machinery, and the disgrace of the trusted servants 
of his lamented predecessor." 1 

It appears from Stevens' speech that he expected a 
verdict for conviction. This is not surprising as more 
than two-thirds of the Senators had gone on record 
condemning Johnson for his removal of Stanton. 
Few expected that so many Republicans would break 
away from their party to vote for acquittal. 2 On the 

1 Trial, April 27, 1868, Supplement to the Cong. Globe. 

2 Greeley wrote to Stevens under date of April 20, 1868: 
"Keep us posted in the Tribune office. I do not fear the ver- 
dict, but I greatly desire to make the majority on the first vote 
as strong as possible." No doubt the Republican Senators who 
voted for acquittal disappointed the public expectation and de- 
sire and went counter to an overwhelming party opinion. One 
of Stevens' correspondents expressed the prevailing party opin- 
ion when he said that these Johnson Senators had " made a 



516 THE LIFE OF THADDEUS STEVENS 

test vote, on the eleventh article, seven Republican 
Senators supported the President, thirty-five Senators 
voting for conviction, nineteen for acquittal. The 
President had escaped by a margin of one vote. On 
two subsequent votes the prosecution could muster 
no greater strength, and on May 26, 1868, the Senate 
as a Court of Impeachment adjourned to meet no 
more. 

No doubt the result of the impeachment trial was a 
bitter disappointment to Stevens. It was his sincere 
conviction that the welfare of his country demanded 
the removal of the President and that Johnson richly 
deserved the degradation. He felt that a great op- 
portunity had been lost to lay down the true law and 
principles of impeachment, and that improper mo- 
tives and influences had operated to save Johnson 
from the fate that an injured people wished to have 
imposed upon him. 

A few weeks after the close of the trial, July 7, 
1868, Stevens proposed in the House some supple- 
mentary articles of impeachment, not with a view to 
bringing them to a vote but for the purpose of giving 
himself an opportunity to review the trial and to set 
forth what he considered the true principles of im- 
peachment. 

On the one hand, he would not allow political of- 
fenders to escape for abusing their high trust, and, on 
the other hand, would not allow heated and malig- 
nant demagogues to persecute political opponents and 
rivals in a spirit of hatred and vengeance. 

record for themselves that they and their posterity will forever 
blush to see." 



IMPEACHMENT 



5*7 



Instead of assenting to the idea that impeachment 
can only be instituted where there is an indictable 
offense, he contended that impeachment could be had 
mainly for political offenses, to punish malfeasance 
in office and to save the country from injury. 
Wickedness of heart or malice aforethought it is not 
necessary to prove. The President may believe that 
" a certain course of conduct tends to the good of his 
administration and the country. He is warned by his 
advisers and by the legislative branch that he is mis- 
taken and must desist. He reconsiders it and per- 
sists under the conscientious belief that he is right and 
his advisers wrong. 

" Here is no indictable offense. Yet if there be 
large interests at stake intrusted to his care he may 
be crushing the life of the nation while he believes 
himself but doing his duty. How can any man pre- 
tend that such acts as these, which are destroying the 
welfare of a whole people, and are persevered in after 
repeated warnings, do not constitute impeachable of- 
fenses, although not indictable ones?" 

He appealed to authority, to Story, Rawle, Madi- 
son, Hamilton, May, and Curtis. Madison " the fa- 
ther of the Constitution," had said that arbitrary re- 
movals for party purpose would be an impeachable 
offense. Johnson had certainly been guilty of this 
offense. By this process the President had attempted 
to corrupt and bribe citizens of the United States and 
members of Congress who were at the capital ready 
to discharge their duty. 

He reviewed the political misconduct of Johnson. 
He charged him with trying to bribe the Senators of 



518 THE LIFE OE THADDEUS STEVEXS 

the proposed new state of Colorado, agreeing to sign 
the bill for admission if they would support his policy 
in the Senate; with pardoning deserters from the 
United States army if they would cast their votes for 
partisans of the President, — the pardon being urged 
upon that ground alone; with other abuses of the 
pardoning power; with embezzling, or allowing others 
to embezzle the public property ; with allowing the 
confiscation laws to be inoperative, thereby restoring, 
to the special disgust of Stevens, " confiscated and 
abandoned estates to their rich rebel owner," — estates 
which in the aggregate would be sufficient to pay the 
national debt. 

Had the President not been guilty of official per- 
jury this bonded debt, which is now a lien on every 
man's property, would have been paid out of the con- 
fiscated funds of rebels. Instead, he preferred to 
pardon them and restore their property. 

He intimated that the temptations of gold had been 
too much for those in the seats of power, and re- 
flection had brought him to the conclusion that in 
neither Europe nor America will the chief executive 
of a nation be again removed by peaceful means. 
Money and patronage are found stronger than the 
law and impenetrable to the spear of justice. " If 
tyranny becomes intolerable, the only resource will be 
found in the dagger of Brutus. God grant that it 
may never be used ! " 

He recognized that this would seem like " the ar- 
gument of spleen emitted by disappointment at re- 
cent events." He admitted that some of these events 



IMPEACHMENT 519 

had led him to reflect deeply upon the possibilities of 
the human heart, being led to conclude that the lofti- 
est intellect, the most cultivated mind, and the most 
aspiring ambition is just as liable to be purchased with 
gold as those in most limited circumstances. Indeed 
the less cultivated mind, " who sails lower in his 
sphere of hopes and desires, may be harder to mislead 
from the path of virtue," while the cultivated intellect 
may be the nest of " malignity, corruption, and de- 
pravity." 

He desired that the people should be able to punish 
their delinquent rulers and that the government 
should never be allowed to depart from the principles 
of the Declaration of Independence, especially from 
the inalienable rights of life, liberty and its necessary 
concomitant, universal suffrage. " Providence," he 
said, " has placed us in a political Eden. While na- 
ture has given us every advantage of soil, climate, and 
geographical position, man still is vile. But such 
large steps have lately been taken in the true direc- 
tion that the patriot has a right to take courage." 

Stevens closed this speech in certain knowledge of 
the fact that he was standing upon the verge of the 
grave. He knew well that he had but few more days 
to live. His words came, therefore, as his last for- 
mal message to his countrymen whom he had served 
so long, and to the House which his masterful spirit 
had led for so many years. His vision and last wish 
for his country was that it should rise from its great 
civil strife, from the wrong, oppression, and injustice 
that power and wealth had imposed, to be a great and 



520 THE LIFE OF THADDEUS STEVENS 

prosperous nation ruled by the spirit of fundamental 
democracy, — the democracy that had been the ruling 
passion in his own long public life. 

" My sands are nearly run," he said in his parting 
words, " and I can only see with the eye of faith. I 
am fast descending the down hill of life, at the foot of 
which stands an open grave. But you, sir, are prom- 
ised length of days and a brilliant career. If you 
and your compeers can fling away ambition and real- 
ize that every human being, however lowly born or 
degraded by fortune, is your equal ; that every inalien- 
able right that belongs to you belongs also to him, 
truth and righteousness will spread over the land, and 
you will look down from the top of the Rocky Moun- 
tains upon an empire of one hundred millions of 
happy people." 1 

1 July 7, 1868, Globe, p. 3790. 









CHAPTER XX 

CONFISCATION 

/ "T A HERE was one aspect of Stevens' policy in re- 
■*• construction that did not at the time meet with 
the sanction of the nation, and it has certainly been 
condemned by posterity. I refer to the policy which 
he repeatedly urged of the confiscation of the estates 
of ex-Confederates as a war indemnity. A few words 
are necessary to present this aspect of Stevens' career. 

Stevens made three notable speeches to urge upon 
the country the policy of confiscation, one in the 
House in the spring of 1865, one at Lancaster, Sep- 
tember 8, 1865, before the break with Johnson but 
after the latter's policy on reconstruction had been 
pretty well developed, and again in the House, March 
19, 1867, in an attempt to impose a form of confisca- 
tion as an addition to the terms Congress had just 
laid down in the Military Bill. 

He believed that the property of the Confederate 
leaders should be seized and applied to the payment 
of the war debt and to the pensioning of Union sol- 
diers. He looked to this as a belligerent right of 
the nation in war. 

He believed that the Confederate States, being a 
belligerent, and having caused an unjust war and 
staked their fate upon it, would be but suffering, 

'521 



522 THE LIFE OF THADDEUS STEVENS 

by confiscation, what many other and more innocent 
belligerents under defeat had suffered before. 

He did not at any time contend for a universal and 
general confiscation, and he repeatedly raised his 
voice in opposition to the popular desire for the capital 
punishment of the Confederates. He was not a man 
of blood, fond of sanguinary punishments, though, 
in common with nearly every one at the close of the 
war, he expected a few victims should propitiate the 
wrath of the victorious nation, in view, as Stevens 
put it, "of our starved, murdered and slaughtered 
martyrs." y3ut he sought, rather, political punish- 
ments for political crimes"D When, after the assassi- 
nation of Lincoln, Jefferson Davis and other South- 
ern leaders were accused of complicity in that insane 
act, Stevens uttered a quick and complete disclaimer 
of such a belief. He said, " I know these men, and 
they are not capable of such a deed." He appre- 
ciated the Southern sense of honor and manhood; and 
while they had, as he thought, committed great politi- 
cal crimes for which they should be punished, they 
were not capable of the monstrous and cowardly 
crime of assassination. He repeatedly urged re- 
straint against any scheme of bloody assizes or judi- 
cial murders. He recognized the fact that trials for 
treason should not be held by courts martial; that 
would be a stretch of public law. He saw that South- 
erners would not be convicted of treason by impartial 
juries, as that would have to be done in the district in 
which the overt act was committed. A jury might 
be packed to convict, but that would not be an impar- 
tial trial; it would be judicial murder, an act which 



CONFISCATION 523 

Stevens said would rank in infamy with the trial of 
Lord Russell. The same difficulties would arise in 
trials for forfeiture, as there could be no bills of at- 
tainder. Therefore, if there were to be punishments 
which the voice of the nation so generally demanded, 
Stevens claimed that his plan of confiscation was the 
most feasible and effective. 1 

He was not asking the penalty of death on any. 
In principle he was rather opposed to capital punish- 
ments. In December, 1866, he opposed a bill brought 
in by the Judiciary Committee of the House repealing 
the statute of limitations and providing that all per- 
sons guilty of treason might be tried at any time for 
the crime. This, to Stevens, was too much like judi- 
cial murder, and while he knew that no Confederate 
could be convicted of treason, he would rather " let 
every man of them run unpunished forever than to 
make a law now by which they could be punished." 
" By such a measure," he said, " our government 
would be endangered in its future existence, in its 
sense of justice, in its character before the world." 
So many were engaged in treason and rebellion that 
" there must be some quieting law." 2 </ 

No one wished more than Stevens that bloodshed 
might cease with the war. In early life he had 
adopted a doctrine of milder punishments. In seek- 
ing the punishment of confiscation he sought thereby 
to bring about the degradation from social rank and 
political power of the rich and powerful leaders of 
the Rebellion. These " higher-ups " were the respon- 

1 Speech at Lancaster, Sept. 8, 1S65. 

2 McCall, pp. 287-288. 



524 THE LIFE OF THADDEUS STEVENS 

sible and guilty ones. He always contended that the 
great body of the Southern people ought to be ex- 
cused from all penalties of the war which guilt in- 
flicted ; only the culpable leaders should be punished, 
and that, not by death, but by fines and confiscations. 

His doctrine was that when two nations go to war 
to settle a dispute, where each considers himself right, 
and the one nation conquers the other, the conqueror 
has the right to prescribe the terms of peace, impose 
the burdens of confiscation not exceeding the usages 
of modern civilization, and uniformly compel the de- 
feated belligerent in an unjust war to pay the expenses 
of the war and the damages it inflicted. 

The South had proclaimed and maintained a well 
organized government whose stability depended upon 
the relative strength of the two nations at war with 
each other, — for nations they were, for all purposes 
of belligerent rights and liabilities, so long as either 
remained unconquered. The South' s claim was inde- 
pendence. " Whether we ignore their pretensions it is 
clear our Southern malefactors could not," said 
Stevens. Prussia had just made Austria pay 
$45,000,000 toward the expenses of a war that had 
lasted less than a month. 1 

The confiscation Stevens favored was the same in 
principle that had been pursued during the war, the 
same as that announced by the Act of 1862. That 
was enacted as a means of carrying on the war and 
as a deterrent to rebellion; this was proposed as a 

1 A few years later he could have adduced a more forcible 
illustration in the tremendous war indemnity imposed by Ger- 
many upon France, 187 1. 



CONFISCATION - 525 

means ofpaying for thejyar and as a: punishment for 
o ffenses com mitted. The principle of belligerency, 
— the basis of the policy, — was the same in each case. 
The Act of 1862 was designed not as a forfeiture of 
the property of rebels under common law, but as the 
seizure of the enemy's property and its appropriation 
to the expenses and damages of the war. Stevens 
wished that policy to be continued till it had ac- 
complished its purpose. This was the extent of his 
" cruel disposition." He claimed to be asking only 
one-fourth part of the debt inflicted, nor would he 
touch the poor and ignorant. It was the pride of the 
" nabobs " he was after, such as " the few rich about 
Charleston whose millions," he asserted, " had been 
earned by running the blockade, and whose heads 
reached the stars while their feet were trampling 
upon freemen and freedom." 

Stevens insisted upon this policy as a means of re- 
forming Southern society. He believed that the v\ 
foundations of Southern institutions, political, mu- 
nicipal, and social, should be broken up and relaid, or 
" all our blood and treasure have been spent in vain." 
This could only be done by holding the South as a 
conquered people, completely within the power of 
Congress. 

Since he wished to exempt the poor, and punish 
only the rich, who were the culpable leaders, and thus 
to reconstitute society, he proposed to confiscate only 
the estates of those whose lands exceeded 200 acres 
or were worth $10,000. The poor, ignorant, and co- 
erced should be forgiven, since they had merely fol- 
lowed the example and teachings of their wealthy 



526 THE LIFE OF THADDEUS STEVENS 

and intelligent neighbors. The Rebellion would not 
have originated with them. Nine-tenths would thus 
escape all penalty. He estimated that about 70,000 
persons owned about 200 acres each, leaving 71,000,- 
000 acres to all others. There were 294,000,000 acres 
of land in all. Use 40,000,000 to give 40 acres to 
each adult freedman. Sell the rest to the highest 
bidder at a price that would certainly net $10 per 
acre, including town property. The total financial re- 
turn would be $3,540,000,000. Let this be applied as 
follows : 

1. Invest $300,000,000 in six per cent, government 
bonds, adding the semiannual interest to the pensions 
of those maimed by the war. 

2. Apply $200,000,000 for damages to loyal men 
North and South from rebel raids and seizures. 

3. Pay the residue, more than $3,000,000,000 on 
the war debt. 

Speaking before his people at home in his impas- 
sioned plea for this scheme of ruin to Southern 
wealth-holders, Stevens said : 

"Who can object? Is it not just? Look around and see 
the men with one leg, one arm, one eye, carried away by 
rebel bullets, or others wearing the weeds of mourning for 
those sacrificed by rebel perfidy and ask if too much is re- 
quired. In ordinary transactions he who raises a false 
clamor or institutes an unfounded suit is required to pay 
the cost of bis defeat. How much more should this well- 
recognized principle of law apply in such a case as this ! 
Those who have more sympathy with the wives and children 
of rebels than with those of loyal men say that this strip- 
ping rebels of their estates and driving them to exile or 
honest labor would be harsh and severe upon innocent 



CONFISCATION 527 

women and children. It may be so, but that is the result 
of the necessary laws of war. 

" They say it is revolution. No doubt it would work a 
radical reorganization in Southern institutions, habits, and 
manners. It is intended to revolutionize their principles and 
feelings. This may startle feeble minds and shake weak 
nerves. So do all great improvements in the political and 
moral world. It requires a heavy impetus to drive forward 
a sluggish people. When it was first proposed to free the 
slaves and arm the blacks, did not half the nation tremble? 
The prim conservatives, the snobs, and the male waiting- 
maids were in hysterics. Heretofore Southern society has 
had more the features of aristocracy than democracy. The 
Southern States have been despotisms. It is impossible that 
any practical equality of rights can exist where a few thou- 
sand men monopolize the whole landed property. The 
larger the number of small proprietors the more safe and 
stable the government. As the landed interest must govern, 
the more it is subdivided and held by independent owners the 
better. How can republican institutions, free schools, free 
churches, free social intercourse, exist in a mingled com- 
munity of nabobs and serfs, of owners of twenty-thousand- 
acre manors, with lordly palaces, and the occupants of narrow 
huts inhabited by low white trash? If the South is ever to 
be made a safe republic let her land be cultivated by the 
toil of its owners, or the free labor of intelligent citizens. 
This must be done, even though it drive her nobility to 
exile. The owner of ten thousand acres who drives his 
coach-and-four feels degraded by sitting at the same table 
or in the same pew with the embrowned and hard-handed 
farmer who has himself cultivated his own thriving home- 
stead of one hundred and fifty acres. This subdivision of 
lands will yield ten bales of cotton to one that is made now 
and he who produces it will own it and feel himself a man. 
Let us add this plank to our platform : The property of 
the rebels shall pay our national debt and indemnify freed- 
men and loyal sufferers, and under no circumstances 
shall we allow the national debt to be repudiated. Let all 



528 THE LIFE OF THADDEUS STEVENS 

who approve these principles rally with us. Let all others 
go with Copperheads and rebels. Those will be the oppos- 
ing parties. Young men, this duty devolves on you. 
Would to God, if only for that, that I were still in the prime 
of life that I might aid you to fight through this last and 
greatest battle of freedom." x 

To the need and wisdom of this policy Stevens fre- 
quently called public attention, as these pages show. 
In March, 1867, after the reconstruction measures 
were passed, he introduced a formal bill to enact his 
policy into law. •"'His bill involved essentially the 
scheme outlined in this Lancaster speech of 1865, ex- 
cept that all estates above five thousand dollars instead 
of ten thousand dollars were to be subject to the pen- 
alty. He defended his measure in a prepared speech. 
He would make an issue before the American people 
on the punishment of traitors, " a matter that had been 
wholly ignored by a treacherous Executive and a slug- 
gish Congress," to see if they " will sanction perfect 
impunity for murderous belligerents and consent that 
loyal men who have been despoiled of their property 
shall go without compensation." To that issue he was 
ready to devote the small remnant of his life. 

He dwelt on the cruelties of the war, on the con- 
dition of the injured and the destitute, and on the 
great crime of making war on the republic. He was 
ready to share with the President the credit of this 
policy. The President had favored it " while he was 
clothed and in his right mind, but Seward had en- 
tered into him and ever since they have been running 
down steep places into the sea." He quoted John- 

1 Speech at Lancaster, Pa., Sept. 9, 1865. 



CONFISCATION 529 

son in favor of punishing traitors, seizing their plan- 
tations and selling them to honest men. " Let there 
be no protection to traitors," Johnson had said in 
1864, "while the poor man stands out in the cold." 
So Stevens claimed that he was but following the 
teachings of Johnson. 

" This bill," said Stevens, " is condemned only by 
the criminals and their friends and by unmanly men 
whose intellectual and moral vigor has melted into a 
fluid weakness which they mistake for mercy and 
which is untempered by a single grain of justice, and 
by those religionists who mistake meanness for 
Christianity and who forget that the essence of re- 
ligion is to do unto others what others have a right 
to expect from you." He wanted no mawkish 
prating about the fatted calf and the prodigal son, 
whose offense was venial compared with " this mur- 
derous Rebellion which deserved the divine penalty im- 
posed upon Cain ! " 

He insisted on the right of the victor to an in- 
demnity to the full expense of the war. The bill was 
therefore merciful, asking, as it did, for less than a 
tenth of our just claims. Safety requires stern jus- 
tice, and it was but just on the basis of lawful earn- 
ings that the unrequited toil of ages, by which the 
slaves Had earned the land for their masters, should 
at last be rewarded by homesteads for the poor. "If 
we refuse this downtrodden race the rights which 
Heaven has decreed them and the remuneration they 
have earned through long years of oppression, how 
can we hope to escape still further punishment if 
God is just? The plague will come. Seek not to di- 



JO 



o THE LIFE OF THADDEUS STEVEXS 



vert our attention from justice by a puerile cry about 
fatted calves ! " * 

It is not to be understood that Stevens stood alone 
in advocating this policy. Sumner, Wendell Phillips, 
and the radicals all favored it. The American Anti- 
Slavery Society in one of its last meetings declared 
for it. The Southern Unionists greeted the proposal 
with enthusiasm and were its persistent friends. The 
independent Republican journals of the North treated 
it with respect. George William Curtis in Harper's 
j i Weekly called it " a mild confiscation," by no means 

" a frantic act of vengeance," as it had been called. 
The genial Curtis, the gentleman and the scholar, 
is never thought of as " vindictive " or " implacable," 
yet he gave a large measure of endorsement to 
Stevens' proposal, by urging that the freedmen and 
poor laborers, without land, were every day dependent 
upon landholders, and that if they should refuse this 
policy they would surpass in self-restraint and honesty 
any landless class in history. To punish the disloyal 
and to enable the new landless citizens to obtain land, 
" may be inexpedient under the circumstances, but to 
call it vindictive or to suppose it has no defensible 
reason is absurd." 2 The Nation thought it too late 
to carry such a policy in 1867, though that journal 
approved the policy as reasonable for 1865. Now- 
after two years of peace when it was seen that no 
one would be punished for the Rebellion, such a policy 
" could only breed heart burning and hatred which 
centuries of good government could not wipe out." :! 

1 Speech, Cong. Globe, March 19, 1867. 
-Harper's Weekly. May t8, 1867. 
3 Nation, May >, 1807. 



CONFISCATION 531 

Stevens' policy could not be carried out because 
the country was ready to accept the reconstruction 
measures as final and to feel that in them enough had 
been enacted. Reverdy Johnson, of Maryland, repre- 
senting Democratic conservative opinion in the border 
South, accepted these measures as a means of allaying 
sectional strife and to prevent additional and more 
drastic terms. (If it had been made to appear that Ago ^ 
the South was determined to defeat the reconstruc- s 
tion acts as it had the fourteenth amendment, and to » 

prevent the establishment and operation of state gov- 
ernments on the basis of equal rights for the freedmen, 
it is not unlikely that Stevens could have rallied Con- 
gress and the country to his policy of confiscation^ 

* Stevens' detractors have charged that behind this 
policy was the mean and selfish motive of compensa- 
ting himself for damages inflicted on his property 
during Confederate raids and invasions into Pennsyl- 
vania. Stevens was used to such charges and was 
unmoved by them. It does not appear that he ever 
answered this one in public. He despised the men 
who uttered it. He was, indeed, a considerable loser 
by the war. In a private letter of July n, 1863, he 
describes his losses. He says the rebels were led 
by some friend to his place, his iron works at Cale- 
donia. They took his horses, mules, and harness and 
even the crippled horses that were running at large. 
They seized his bacon (about four thousand pounds), 
molasses and other contents of the store; took about 
one thousand dollars' worth of corn in the mills and 
as much other grain. They burned his furnace, saw- 
mills, two forges, and the rolling-mill. They slept in 



532 THE LIFE OF THADDEUS STEVENS 

the office and store room and next day they burned 
them, with books and all. They even hauled off his 
bar iron, being on the road convenient for shoeing 
horses, and his wagons, about four thousand dollars' 
worth. They destroyed all his fencing, much of it 
new and extensive. They destroyed his grass, about 
eighty tons, and broke in the windows of the dwelling 
houses where his workmen lived. " They could not," 
he concluded, " have done the job cleaner. It is 
rather more than I expected. They finally expressed 
great regret that they were not so fortunate as to meet 
the owner, who seems to be very popular with the 
chivalry. I know not what the poor families will do ; 
I must provide for their present relief." * 

Stevens estimated his loss at about ninety thousand 
dollars, about the savings of his life. He recognized 
that the government did not indemnify for such losses 
and he never expected to recover. For the third time 
he was reduced to comparative poverty ; yet he thought 
that with the little strength remaining to him he would 
be able to make a living. He, therefore, refused to ac- 
cept a proposal from some of his friends that pro- 
vision should be made for his declining age. It is not 
at all likely that he would have put in a claim to the 

government if his scheme of confiscation had been 

r 
carried. LHe cared as little for money in itself as 

any man living." 1 " I think I have," he said, " enough 
to pay my debts. As to my personal wants nature 
will soon take care of them. We must all expect to 
suffer by this wicked war. I have not felt a mo- 
ment's trouble for my share of it. If finally the 

1 Stevens' Papers, Library of Congress July II, 1863. 



CONFISCATION' « 



oo 



government shall be reestablished over a whole ter- 
ritory and not a vestige of slavery be left, I shall 
deem it a cheap purchase. I hope to be able with my 
remaining strength to sustain myself until my 
strength and my temporal wants shall cease to- 
gether." * He forbade the publication of these letters, 
saying that he did " not write for fame/' 

It will be readily agreed that Stevens' scheme of 
confiscation, after the war had long since ceased, was 
not a statesmanlike policy 7) It was not characterized 
by generosity nor nobleness of spirit, nor was it cal- 
culated to promote peace, prosperity and good will 
in a restored Union. It partook of the implacable 
and the unforgiving, and showed an unwillingness 
to be reconciled and to heal the wounds of war. It 
disregarded the wisdom of experience in the history 
of human governments, — that generous amnesty for 
political crimes against a government whose power is 
undoubted and whose authority is no longer contested, 
is the surest guarantee of order and loyalty among 
a disaffected citizenship.^ But Stevens, like all public 
men, must be judged by his times^ In holding that 
the leaders and promoters of the Rebellion were crimi- 
nals who ought to be punished for their crimes, he 
was in entire accord with the great mass of the 
Northern people, and his utterances differed from 
those of his colleagues and contemporaries, ii they 
differed at all, only in force and intensity, and not 
at all in spirit. That which in Stevens has come to 
be called uncharitable and malignant was at the 
time regarded only as a hot and righteous indignation 

1 Letter of July 6, 1863, to T. Stevens. 



\i 



534 THE LIFE OF THADDEUS STEVENS 

over stupendous wrongs that had been committed 
against the nation. The bitter strife of those times 
led many men better in moral nature than Stevens to 
indulge in harsh and malevolent utterances while they 
were in most of the ordinary relations of life, as 
Stevens was, benevolent in spirit. 

In personal relations among his associates Stevens 
did not usually manifest the implacable spirit. Ample 
testimony may be gathered from the good people of 
Lancaster among whom he spent so many years, to 
the effect that in the relations of social and every-day 
life few men were more generally beloved by their 
friends and neighbors than was Thaddeus Stevens. 
He was likable, not only among his partisans, but 
even among many whom he opposed in legal and po- 
litical contests; and, strange as it may seem, Southern 
men, in many instances, found him personally attrac- 
tive and agreeable. His friend, Judge William D. 
Kelly, of Pennsylvania, said of him that personally 
" he was incapable of a vindictive act." His policy 
toward the South may serve to illustrate the depths 
of his political convictions and the extent to which, 
intense as he was in nature, he allowc-a his political 
opinions and passions to govern his attitude anu con- 
duct toward his fellow men. Hard in heart tov\ n 1 
his political foes, he sought to encompass their punish- 
ment, but his thought was not of that alone. Pre- 
tending to no high degree of morality or religion, he 
claimed to be governed by humane and strict justice, 
— the justice that would give equal opportunities for 
all. ["He looked upon his policy as a necessary means 
t 1 to breaking up the system of land monopoly in the 



CONFISCATION 535 

South which he regarded as the essential support of 
the slavery system which he would uproot and ob- 
literate. His vision of a true republic had led him 
to see that wage-slavery for labor was but little better 
than chattel slavery. He would, therefore, take power 
from the few and distribute it among the many by 
breaking down the landed aristocracy and relieving a 
landless class, — a class that was always dangerous~to 
-a republic. 1 His policy in this matter as in all others 
was inspired" in large measure by his democracy and 
his love of the common man. 

- He believed that justice would abolish the ills both 
of poverty and aristocracy jjmd while claiming that 
he had voluntarily relinquished all claim for his own 
personal injuries and that his passions were so en- 
tirely under his control that he would inflict no 
vindictive vengeance upon those who had done him 
the greatest wrong, yet his conscientious duty as an 
agent of his people, and a true public policy in view 
of such a gigantic and unprovoked rebellion, led him 
to seek the fines and penalties, that, as he thought, 
should always be visited upon the public enemy and 
the defeated and guilty authors of an unjust war. 

1 remarks of W. D. Kelly in Memorial Address on Stevens, 
in Jongress, 1868. f f t i; , f 



CHAPTER XXI 

THE GREENBACKER ; FUNDING, DEBT PAYMENT AND 
CONTRACTION 

\ T the close of the Civil War in 1865 the people 
■*■ *• of the United States were in the enjoyment of 
unprecedented prosperity. Within eight short years 
they had passed through the valley of adversity — 
through a period of loss, stagnation in trade, fall of 
wages, suspension of enterprises, bankruptcy, disaster, 
ruin. What were the causes of this woful change of 
condition, of this social and industrial catastrophe 
that appears to have consumed more wealth and 
caused more misery and destruction, so far as the ma- 
terial prosperity and happiness of the people are con- 
cerned, than all the waste, losses, and disasters of the 
four years of war? 

This summary statement of a chapter in our in- 
dustrial history, with its attendant inquiry, indicates 
the pivotal controversy in our financial history. The 
controversy involved a conflict of interests, a war 
of industrial and financial classes. It involved the 
whole problem of money, with which the country has 
had severe periodical wrestlings since the Civil War. 
As one reviews the history of the period with its 
many controverted issues and partisan strife, he is 
led to believe that the merits of the great struggle 
over money and the currency were ill-understood by 

536 



DEBT PAYMENT AND CONTRACTION 537 

the disinterested public opinion of Stevens' day. 
The financial policy then instituted under the direction 
of a rising powerful moneyed interest, can not be said 
to have occupied the attention of the people, fraught 
though it was with the direst peril to their welfare 
and happiness. Either the financial policy adopted 
by those in the places of power was pursued in the 
face of public sentiment, or the people of America 
capable of contributing toward public opinion never 
adequately understood the merits of the controversy. 
The attention of the country was distracted by the 
dominant and heated questions growing out of war 
and reconstruction, and the people were not permitted 
to give direct and thoughtful attention to the vital 
matters of currency and finance. 

Stevens himself lived through but a few brief years 
of this struggle, but as he contributed to its discus- 
sions and opinions in important ways, and since the 
Stevens greenback occupied the center of the stage 
for the first decade of the dispute, one feels that a 
sketch of his life should attempt at least a brief por- 
trayal of the merits and issues which this struggle 
involved. 

Stevens was a Greenbacker. True, he did not join 
that historic political party. He did not live long 
enough to do so, nor is it certain that he would have 
abondoned the Republicans had he lived until the 
Greenbackers came into the arena, — clear in his mind 
and deep in his convictions though he was as to the 
righteousness of the Greenback cause. He had an- 
nounced principles and policies that underlay the in- 
ception and progress of the new radical party. He 



538 THE LIFE OF THADDEUS STEVENS 

did what he could, while living, to keep his own party 
from pursuing the policy of selfishness and error, as 
he thought, which brought the Greenback part}- into 
being, — a party whose history and apologia have yet 
to be written, and whose cause has been treated with 
scant justice, not to say with gross injustice, by many 
economic and historical w 7 riters. He had tried to de- 
liver the government from bondage to the gold stand- 
ard during the war and he believed that if gold was 
ever to be restored to its former money use, it would 
be not by the policy of contracting and destroying the 
beneficent currency which the war had produced, but 
by the growth of the country, by its expanding trade, 
and by the retention and larger legal use of this paper 
currency, — all of which would serve to bring the 
greenbacks to a parity with gold. Thus, gold, silver, 
and the war paper, would all circulate together. 

It is the purpose of this chapter to present, as fairly 
as the limits of space will permit, the merits of this 
contention, and to point out the significance of the 
financial policies that were being pursued during the 
remaining years of Stevens' life. 

The war had hardly ended before a policy was be- 
gun of contracting the greenback currency and of 
changing the national indebtedness from a basis of 
paper values to a basis of coin. 

The struggle began, — or was again renewed, — on 
the one hand, to discredit and destroy the war cur- 
rency and to reduce values to a gold basis; on the 
other hand, to preserve this currency and to retain 
the measure of value that war conditions and legisla- 
tion had brought about. It was contended by those 



DEBT PAYMENT AND CONTRACTION 539 

who wished to carry out the policy of destroying the 
legal tender currency of the war, that greenbacks 
were " bad money " ; that they were not money at all, 
but only promises to pay money; that, as their issue 
had been permitted only because of the necessities of 
war, their existence, as an irredeemable paper cur- 
rency, should be tolerated only so long as neces- 
sity compelled; that to continue this "plethora of pa- 
per money " as a permanent policy would be to 
undermine the morals of the people and to strike at 
the root of our national prosperity by encouraging 
waste and extravagances. 1 It was said that this 
money was " dishonest " and that the honor of the 
nation demanded that the greenbacks should be " re- 
deemed " by being called in and destroyed; that the 
country's prosperity, its increasing industries and ex- 
panding trade, while gold was at a premium, could be 
only a " mock prosperity," — a " delusion and a snare," 
" a hollow and seductive prosperity," as Secretary Mc- 
Culloch called it. 2 The people merely thought they 
were prosperous, while, in fact, they were not. They 
were deluded, since the greenback prices were " in- 
flated," " hocus-pocus " and " abnormal." Any price 
above the gold price was " unnaturally high," 3 lead- 
ing to " an unhealthy condition of business " ; and 
the only road to safety and real prosperity was to re- 
turn to the gold standard which was the measure of 
" normal prices " and the only " sound and honest 
money for the world." 4 

1 Sec'y. McCulloch's Report, Dec 4, 1865. 

- Addresses and Speeches by Hugh McCulloch, pp. 50, 51. 

3 D. A. Wells' Pamphlet, 1876. 

* Ibid. 



540 THE LIFE OF THADDEUS STEVENS 

Those who held this view contended that coin cir- 
culation was the " normal volume " and that the " re- 
dundant currency" must be reduced; that the only 
honest and practical way of restoring our paper 
money to a " sound condition, equal to the money of 
the world," was to retire it until what remains should 
circulate as the equivalent of coin, and after that was 
done it would be better to substitute for the green- 
backs the paper money of the banks, " convertible " 
into coin (when possible or convenient) ; and that 
this " convertible " bank paper was the only kind of 
paper money that should be tolerated. It was urged 
vehemently that, at every hazard, the greenbacks 
should not be used in the payment of the public debt. 
Although they had been used to buy the government's 
bonds when gold was selling for two to one, yet for 
the government to use them in satisfying the claims of 
the patriotic bondholders who had made such financial 
sacrifices in the war, would be the last act of national 
dishonor. 

Many of the partisan advocates of this policy 
charged, and no doubt many good people were made 
to believe, that the only reason why others favored a 
currency and a lawful money other than coin or its 
equivalent, was because they wished to cheat their 
creditors, repudiate their debts, violate their contracts 
and dishonor the nation. 1 

1 .Many of the honest yeomanry of the land, men who had 
fought bravely for the integrity of the nation, who were strug- 
gling manfully to meet their financial obligations, were de- 
nounced as " repudiators," " cheats," " hayseeds," " financial 
lunatics," " wild-eyed cranks," and " rag-money men," because 
they wished to retain in use, and, if need be, to increase the 
circulation of the greenbacks that had successfully carried the 



DEBT PAYMENT AND CONTRACTION 541 

Many of the honest opponents of the greenbacks, 
the advocates of a contracted currency and the gold 
standard, seemed possessed with the idea that nothing 
but coin was real money. They deemed no one com- 
petent to deal with the money question who had not 
recognized that as a fundamental fact. 1 On the basis 
of this dogma as a fundamental premise, they had set- 
tled the money question in the most arbitrary and 
dogmatic way, and they, therefore, usually met their 
greenback opponents not so much with reasonable ar- 
guments as with misrepresentation, denunciation, rid- 
icule, hoots, and sneers. Had not the continental 
currency of the Revolution become worthless? Had 
not the state bank currency of the War of 18 12 led 
the country to confusion? In all the history of cur- 
rency had not " paper money crazes " produced only 
conspicuous wreck and ruin? If Congress were al- 
lowed, as a permanent policy, " to coin money and 
regulate its value," and to do this by paper issues, had 
not all experience shown that the debtor classes would 
bring such pressure to bear on government that the 
public printing-presses would be started to work and 
the legal tender notes would be issued in such quanti- 
ties that they would become altogether worthless? 
Would not debtors then satisfy their creditors with 
notes that cost them little or no effort to obtain ? Was 
it not too dangerous to entrust such power to the rep- 
country through the war. " He who is not in favor of con- 
tracting the currency is not in favor of paying it, and he who is 
not in favor of paying it is a repudiator." This was adopted 
as a text, or motto, on a pamphlet on " Contraction," by David 
A. Wells, in 1876. 

1 John Sherman, Speeches and Reports on Finance, p. 188. 



542 THE LIFE OF THADDEUS STEVENS 

resentatives of the people under universal suffrage? 
Was there not a " natural immutable law," a " divine 
law," that there was but one true standard for money 
and that standard gold ? " From the earliest record 
of humanity, from Solon to our day, gold and silver 
have been the media to effect exchange and they 
would continue to be the current coin till the com- 
pleted history of nations now rising into greatness shall 
be folded away among the records of time." * 

What was to be done to work out into law the policy 
of this idea of money? It was simple enough. Let 
all the paper obligations of the government, amount- 
ing to $1,500,000,000 or more, including its paper 
money, be turned into coin liabilities, — into long time 
gold bonds. Let the nation not dishonor itself by pay- 
ing off, or redeeming, any of its obligations in the so- 
called " lawful money " which it had made, and which 
had been used to buy these obligations ; but let all these 
non-interest bearing greenbacks be called in and re- 
tired. They were promissory notes, an evidence of 
debt ; let them be burned up and utterly destroyed that 
neither government nor people may ever see their face 
again, and in their stead let there be issued interest- 
bearing gold bonds. As for a paper currency the na- 

1 Such propositions, the reader may be surprised to learn, 
were laid down as fundamental postulates on the money ques- 
tion by no less a person than Senator John Sherman, of Ohio, 
in 1869. See Speeches and Reports, p. 188. Sherman, probably 
moved by the political situation in Ohio and the West, was 
then resisting what he deemed too rapid a contraction, but he 
was entirely controlled by the traditional and prevailing coin 
theory of money. lie lived to see silver laid aside as standard 
money, which had '1 from '"the earliest records of 

humanity," and he helped on in the process, and that, too, quite 
a while before the completed history of rising nations had been 
entirely " folded away in the records of time." 



DEBT PAYMENT AND CONTRACTION 543 

tional banks could issue their notes if they would, and 
the nation's credit, in the shape of its bonds, the only 
legitimate form of the war debt, could be had to make 
these bank notes good safe money. All values were 
again to be based upon coin, and all debtors, con- 
tractors, those with enterprises on foot, were to be 
forced to a settlement upon that basis. 

To these blind views, sustained by a prejudice and 
tradition that bordered on idolatry, and the fatal policy 
that was instituted to carry them out, the Greenbackers 
(and Stevens would have been with them in this) at- 
tributed the panic of 1873. The policy was directly 
in the interests of capitalists, bankers, and money lend- 
ers, — the men who held the national debt. The 
Greenbackers looked upon this policy as the rough 
hard road by which the country was forced to travel 
in reaching what was called the " resumption of spe- 
cie payments." And when within less than eight 
short years that policy had been carried and it was 
known that at a time fixed it would be an accomplished 
fact, the debt of the country, held' by its bondholders 
and measured by its products and its toil, had been 
doubled; while the money in circulation among the 
people, the measure of their contracts, their properties 
and their values, had been reduced to such a degree as 
to make industrial panic and desolation inevitable. 

The country reached the specie standard and its at- 
tendant " real prosperity." But there were certain 
classes of people who seemed unable to appreciate the 
blessings of such prosperity, who insisted that another 
money policy would have been more in harmony with 
the interests of the masses of the people, — of the man- 



544 THE LIFE OF THADDEUS STEVENS 

ufaCturers, laborers, farmers, and producers of the 
country's wealth. The greenback dollar could now be 
exchanged for one in gold if any one cared for it, but 
it was felt that the country had come to a time when, 
as Solon Chase expressed it in his homely way up in 
Maine, there was " too much hog in the dollar " and 
when " them steers, while they grew well, shrank in 
value as fast as they grew." The value of the hay 
and the corn which the farmers fed year by year to 
their hogs and their steers was being absorbed year by 
year by the loan and the bond. It was indeed pros- 
perity for a certain class, — but the class represented 
less than five per cent, of the community. 

Stevens had an eye exactly adapted to the detection 
of that kind of prosperity and before he died he fore- 
saw and foretold it. He represented another view of 
money and the greenback, and another process of re- 
covering the use of coin in circulation, — though that 
recovery was not at all deemed essential to the progress 
and prosperity of the country. Just as there was a 
conflict of interest and opinion at the inception of the 
greenback money, so now the same forces, or inter- 
ests, were warring over its continuance. 

It was held on this side of the controversy, that the 
greenbacks were doing the work of money; that as 
this paper money was doing the same money work 
for the country that gold could do, it would have the 
same industrial effect to retire it as would the loss of 
so much coin if the country were on a gold basis. 
These friends of the greenbacks had the vision to see 
that the virtue, or essence, of money is not in its sub- 
stance but in its use; that whatever does the work of 



DEBT PAYMENT AND CONTRACTION 545 

money is money ; and they saw that the greenbacks 
could and did perform the only essential functions of 
money, — they could satisfy debts, pay taxes, and ef- 
fect exchanges. As certain of their own prophets had 
taught, men like Peter Cooper and Eleazar Lord, — 
practical and eminently successful business men and 
noble public spirited philanthropists, — the defenders 
of the greenback now had the faith to declare that 
money is the creature of law; that all money, metallic 
or paper, should be issued and its volume controlled 
by the government, and that its value, other things be- 
ing equal, would depend upon the quantity that gov- 
ernment permitted to exist ; that a precious commodity 
like gold was not essential nor desirable, — its supply 
might be capricious or so limited as to be easily " cor- 
nered " ; that the value of money (thoughtlessly 
spoken of as "intrinsic") is never inherent in the 
substance used, but depends always upon the relation 
between the mone} r demand and the money supply ; — 
money itself was subject to that great law of supply 
and demand, like everything else. They held that if 
we could but continue a paper money, limited in sup- 
ply, backed by a financially responsible government, 
with an unlimited power of taxation, a money receiv- 
able for all debts, public and private, guaranteeing no 
redemption beyond its acceptance for taxes, — such 
money, the Greenbacker held, would be the best that 
could be devised. 

The friends of the greenbacks claimed that these 
notes had enabled the people to build up the country, 
and that they were not to be regarded as a debt in any 
proper sense, but as money, which at the time was 



546 THE LIFE OF THADDEUS STEVENS 

very properly being used to measure the value of all 
property, gold and silver included. But if these green- 
backs were to be looked upon as a debt, they were cer- 
tainly the least burdensome of all forms of the public 
indebtedness, and that it would be nothing short of 
financial folly, or a plain case of class favoritism, to 
substitute for them a bonded debt that would cost the 
government millions in interest and the people an 
equal sum in additional taxes and shrinking prices. 

This party of opinion did not object to the use of 
gold and silver in the currency of the country, but this 
resumption of specie (not at any time a matter of im- 
portance to be sought by legislation) was to be brought 
about not by a forced but by a natural process, by such 
growth of the country and the expansion of trade as 
would so increase the demand for money that gold 
and silver, as well as all the paper currency, would be 
called into use, and would be interchangeable; and 
thus the parity of paper and gold would be established. 

In the issue thus joined between the two views of 
money and the greenback, the friends of the green- 
backs were defeated. They were not fully heard. 
The organs of public opinion were not in their hands. 
They were generally common people, many of them 
poor and struggling with debt. They had but few 
leaders of weight and reputation, while the leaders 
they had, like Stevens, were absorbed by another great 
public question, and Stevens was destined to pass too 
soon for this cause from the field of action. When 
the policy of contraction had proceeded and forced 
resumption had been decided upon; after the panic of 
1873 nac ^ come and while the country was still in the 



DEBT PAYMENT AND CONTRACTION 547 

midst of the commercial depression that followed, the 
greenback protagonists called forcible attention to 
some facts in the history of the period which they 
deemed to be responsible for all the suffering of panic 
and disturbance through which the country had been 
carried. The essence of their complaint, so far as it 
may be reduced to a summary statement, is as follows, 
— involving what appears to be a very significant and 
essentially true representation of the financial record of 
the time. 

When the war ended, the public debt of the United 
States stood at something over $2,800,000,000. Of 
this amount more than $1,200,000,000 was payable at 
the option of the treasury or within a brief period. 
There was in circulation among the people a volume 
of money of more than $2,1 00,000,000. * As part of 
this currency bore interest, it was, therefore, a kind 
that partook of the value of an investment; but they 
were notes that had been engraved and prepared in a 
form to circulate as money, and did, in fact, so circu- 
late until they were funded into gold-bearing bonds, 
or their interest accumulated so as to make them su- 
perior to the ordinary kind of currency. 2 

All this money was in active and favorable circu- 
lation among the people and was being used as the 
basis of exchange and contract values. In ten short 
years the money of the people was reduced from more 
than two thousand millions to but a little over half a 
billion of dollars. From a circulating currency of 

1 Counting the greenbacks, the bank notes, the compound in- 
terest notes and the short time interest-bearing notes. 

2 Cong. Record, March 31, 1874, Maynard, Chairman of Com- 
mittee on Banking and Currency. 



548 THE LIFE OF THADDEUS STEVENS 

fifty-eight dollars per capita in 1865, the people were 
reduced to a little over seventeen dollars per capita, in 
1875, — while the national debt measured in terms of 
wealth, of its commands over the products and prop- 
erty of the earth, had almost doubled. 1 Whatever 
show of reasoning or sophistry, or confusion of words, 
may be arrayed to refute the quantitative theory of 
money the instance has yet to be adduced in the his- 
tory of currency when such a process as this can be 
gone through with by a people in so short a time with- 
out loss, disaster and ruin. 

Thus, we see that with a redundant paper currency 
the country was launched upon a quick voyage to a 
specie standard. It was put under the severe process 
of passing from an inflated currency to a contracted 
currency, from paper currency under which wheat sold 
at nearly three dollars a bushel to a gold currency un- 
der which wheat could sell at but little more than one 
dollar a bushel. This meant on all products and prop- 
erties a sudden and disastrous slump from high prices 
to low prices. It meant that contracts could not be 
kept; that debts could not be paid; that ruin would 
come to thousands of competent business men ; and that 
the owners of farms and homes who had paid half their 
debt on purchased goods and properties had to let their 
property go to satisfy the other half of the claim. To 
tens of thousands of sober, honest, and industrious 
citizens it meant the loss of property, business, reputa- 
tion, and home. As Mr. Sherman said in the Senate, 
it was impossible to take such a voyage without dis- 
tress. To every person except a capitalist out of debt, 

1 Zachos, J. C, Financial Opinions of Peter Cooper, p. 9. 



DEBT PAYMENT AND CONTRACTION 549 

or to a salaried officer or annuitant, it was a period of 
loss, bankruptcy, and disaster. To every railroad it 
was an addition of at least one-third to the burden of 
its debt, and, more than that deduction from the value 
of its stock. To every bank it meant the necessity of 
paying one hundred and fifty dollars for every hundred 
dollars of its notes and deposits, except so far as the 
bank might transfer this to its debtors. It meant the 
ruin of all dealers whose debts are twice their capital, 
though one-third less than their property. It meant 
the fall of all agricultural productions without any 
very great reduction of taxes. " To attempt this task 
suddenly, by a surprise upon our people, by at once 
paralyzing their industry, by arresting them in the 
midst of lawful business and applying a new standard 
of value to their property without any reduction of 
their debt or giving them an opportunity to compound 
with their creditors or distribute their loss, would be 
an act of folly without example in modern times. 1 

I introduce this brief study bearing on the merits of 
the financial struggle following the Civil War because 
Thaddeus Stevens, since the country had entered upon 
this controversy three years before his death, bore in 
the struggle a very prominent and notable part. The 
large and permanent significance of this issue, as here 
interpreted, may not have been clear to all who took 
part in the struggle, but its underlying merits were 
clear to Stevens. He saw enough of this conflict 
of ideas and policies to lead him to place himself upon 
record. He was, in fact, already upon record, and he 

1 John Sherman, Speech in the United States Senate, Jan. 27, 
1869, Speeches and Reports on Finance, p. 199. 



550 THE LIFE OF THADDEUS STEVENS 

had now only to follow consistently the course upon 
which he had begun. 

As usual, he spoke forth boldly his principles and 
his sympathies. When the issue, as he would put it, 
between the money of the people and the money of 
the gold-dealers came up in a new form Stevens com- 
mitted himself instinctively to what he considered the 
cause of the people, to the cause of the poor, of the 
struggling masses. The other side, the forced re- 
sumption of gold payments and dear money, he looked 
upon as the cause of the rich, the powerful, of the 
pampered classes that were seeking special favors 
from government. He opposed Secretary McCulloch's 
policy of steady and rapid contraction; he resisted 
the forced and rapid resumption of specie payments ; 
and all the wrath and indignation of his nature were 
roused to oppose and denounce the policy of turn- 
ing all the obligations of the government into long 
time gold bonds and of repudiating the " lawful 
money " of the country as a means of debt payment. 
A brief review of his opinions on these financial pro- 
posals of the time will serve to make clear his atti- 
tude toward what he deemed the ruinous policy which 
for years he had sought to avert. 

During the continuance of the war Stevens had fre- 
quent occasion to discuss the loan policy of the gov- 
ernment. When the Loan Act of March, 1863, was 
pending he made known his dissatisfaction with the 
policy that was being pursued. This act, in addition 
to authorizing $900,000,000 in ten- forty bonds at six 
per cent., provided for the issue of short time treasury- 
notes. These notes were to bear interest; they were 



DEBT PAYMENT AND CONTRACTION 551 

to be a legal tender for their face, and were convertible 
into greenbacks; that is, government would accept or 
redeem them. They had coupons attached, and as the 
interest accumulated they were taken in and held by the 
banks; and on the basis of these notes as a reserve (on 
which the holders were drawing gold interest) the 
banks would issue more of their own notes, thus in- 
flating the currency. When the coupons were clipped 
and the interest was collected in gold the notes were 
once more sent out to circulate among the people, — 
until the interest, always in gold, accumulated to an 
amount sufficient to make them an object for hoard- 
ing. Thus there was recurring inflation and contrac- 
tion of the government currency as the periodical pay- 
ment of interest would inflate it and the hoarding of 
the notes by the banks might be used to contract it. 

Stevens vigorously attacked this policy. He 
thought it was directly in the interests of the banks 
and those who could hoard the notes for gold. To 
him it was plain class legislation, and destructive to 
the interest of the government. He proposed a sub- 
stitute providing, what he had always at heart, that 
the government pay its interest in " lawful money," 
just such money as other people pay theirs in, ex- 
cept where our faith is specifically pledged to pay in 
gold; and the public faith to pay in gold he would 
pledge no further. " What justice is there in com- 
pelling the people to receive their interest in a currency 
of forty per cent, less value than is paid to the banks 
and capitalists who invest in government bonds? It 
seems to me a rank injustice." With so small an in- 
terest-bearing debt as we now have gold is at forty 



552 THE LIFE OF THADDEUS STEVENS 

per cent, premium. 1 What will it bring when the 
debt is ten times as great, as it will be when all the 
prospective bonds are issued? Gold would be at a 
premium of sixty per cent. He saw a rising debt of 
more than $3,000,000,000 with an interest burden in 
gold so great that the taxes made necessary to meet 
this claim would lead to but one result, namely, bank- 
ruptcy and repudiation. 

If the government could be brought to the wise and 
reasonable policy of paying its interest in legal tender 
notes, both on its short time loans and its long time 
bonds, then the short loans when they fall due, may 
either be paid in legal tender or be funded into twen- 
ty-year bonds. He calculated that $50,000,000 of 
gold would be received annually from customs, being 
$26,000,000 above the ordinary government needs. 
This surplus could be used as a sinking fund for ten 
years, deposited in state banks on ample securities. 
Before this fund could be exhausted the decreasing in- 
terest and the increasing receipts would (i enable the 
sinking fund to pay the whole debt in coin without 
buying a dollar." 

His policy was to offer long time twenty-year bonds 
whose principal was to be specially payable in coin, 
while the interest was to be payable in legal tenders, 
in the belief that after the lapse of twenty years the 
country would again be on a specie basis, from its 
assured growth in population and trade. He thought 
his specie bonds would sell better than " the law ful 
money bonds " that the committee was proposing, with 
gold interest. "I object/' he said, "to the payment 

1 He was speaking on January 20, 1863. 



DEBT PAYMENT AND. CONTRACTION 553 

of specie for interest, as it sets the government and 
the merchant in competition and puts them both in 
the power of banks and brokers. Besides it is a shame 
to use one currency for the government and another 
for the people." He thought it would be better for 
the investor to take his interest in legal tender, which 
will answer all the purposes of business, and get the 
principal in gold, than to take driblets of interest in 
coin and the substantive capital in legal tender or what- 
ever else the government makes money. 1 

Stevens' counter-proposal to save the treasury from 
being worsted in the financial deal and to recall the 
government from its policy of bidding for gold and 
thus boosting the gold premium, was not successful. 
But the discussion shows very clearly in what kind 
of money Stevens thought the bonds that were then 
being issued might be paid. His warning went un- 
heeded. The war was impeded and the treasury dis- 
tressed in order to get the rising gold for interest pay- 
ments. But Stevens did not despair of the republic. 
" Such," he said, " is the great wealth, the fertility, 
the irrepressible energy of this great country that she 
will be able to rise from her prostration, like the fabled 
giant who, when felled to earth, drew fresh strength 
from the bosom of his mother, — and hurl to destruc- 
tion all the rebels of the South and all the traitors of 
the North, who, within this House and out of it, may 
be seeking for their own grasping ends to put unjust 
and double financial burdens upon the backs of the peo- 
ple, or who are basely advising us to lay down our 
arms and meanly sue for peace." 2 

1 Globe, Jan. 20, 1863, p. 411. 2 Globe, Jan. 20, 1863, p. 411. 



554 THE LIFE OE THADDEUS STEVENS 

Stevens, however, never rested under the policy that 
had been adopted. He believed that the effort of the 
government to continue interest payments in coin 
would in the end prove disastrous. To that policy he 
attributed the annoyances, uncertainties, losses, and ab- 
normal prices resulting from the speculations in gold. 
He was especially irritated because the gold dealers 
had such influence with the government and because 
they were still able to dominate the money market. 
He let no occasion slip to criticize their ways or to 
embarrass them in their proceedings. One of his 
measures, which seems only like a blind stagger to- 
ward accomplishing its purpose, was probably pro- 
posed as a means of agitation rather than as a practical 
measure of legislation that he expected to carry to a 
conclusion. On December 6, 1864, he introduced a 
bill to prevent gold and silver coin and bullion from 
being paid or exchanged for a greater value than their 
real current value, and from preventing any note or 
bill issued by the United States and made lawful 
money from being received for a smaller sum than is 
therein specified. The bill provided that a contract 
made payable in coin might be paid in legal tender 
United States notes and that no difference in sale or 
value should be allowed between them ; that " no per- 
son shall by any device, shift or contrivance, receive 
or pay or contract to receive or pay " any treasury 
note for " less than its lawfully expressed value " ; and 
that if " any person shall in the purchase or sale of 
gold or silver agree to receive in payment notes at less 
than their par value, he shall be deemed to have of- 



DEBT PAYMENT AND CONTRACTION 555 

fended against the provisions of this act and shall be 
punished accordingly." 

This may serve to indicate Stevens' eagerness to 
break up " gold gambling." It was generally believed 
that gold fluctuations were due to " unpatriotic and 
criminal efforts of speculators and probably of secret 
enemies to raise the price of gold regardless of the in- 
jury inflicted on the country, and that ' gold gam- 
blers ' J asa class were disloyal men in sympathy with 
the South." 2 The short lived "gold bill" of the 
previous summer 3 had been passed at the suggestion 
of Secretary Chase for the purpose of preventing this 
speculation. It was futile, as this similar proposal 
now reported by Stevens was sure to be. The opera- 
tion of such a law would have been a pestiferous, not 
to say tyrannical and intolerable, interference with 
all business dealing and contracts. It is hard to say 
what chaos would have resulted. Of course, as a 
means of reducing or controlling the price of gold, or 
of boosting the greenback, this was purely an artificial 
process and was entirely vain. It is difficult to believe 
that Stevens did not perceive this. He did not press 
his proposal, though he used it as an occasion for a 
little salutary education. Stevens' better course 
would have been to pursue the consistent policy of urg- 
ing the repeal of the " exception clause " in the green- 
back acts. This would have produced some effect, and 
Stevens could then, at any rate, have resigned himself 

1 Book of Drew, Ind., Dec. 2. 

2 Senatorial Opinion, cited by Dewey, p. 295. 

3 June 17, 1864. 



556 THE LIFE OF THADDEUS STEVENS 

and his country to allowing gold to take care of itself 
and go where it would. 

It was not difficult for the opponents of this pro- 
posal to expose its weakness. Blaine attacked it as 
impossible and said that if it should become a law the 
entire population of the Pacific Coast would be liable 
to indictment and conviction for a criminal offense, — 
for believing and acting on the belief, as they did, that 
a gold dollar was worth more than a paper one. It 
certainly was worth more, partly by act and favor of 
government. Stevens indulged in some satire against 
Blaine, — as to his " intuitive way of getting at great 
national questions." For himself he confessed he did 
not know how far his bill was practicable, or how far 
it should be modified, but he was sure there should be 
some law to prevent gold gambling, by which it is put 
at two and a half times its value, — a system that is 
making every man who eats food pay three prices for 
it. These gamblers would take advantage of anything 
to put up the price of gold. He would not say that 
this legislation would reach it, but he claimed that it 
was just such legislation that England had used in her 
great wars with Napoleon and had found beneficial. 

On February 28, 1865, while another loan bill was 
pending, Stevens spoke at length. He reviewed the 
currency and loan history of the war and called at- 
tention to his repeated efforts to change the financial 
system that had been adopted and to inaugurate a new 
one which would have reduced the price of gold and 
the price of every article of living and all munitions of 
war. He now intended to make one more effort to 
bring about a change. He had entertained high hopes 



DEBT PAYMENT AND CONTRACTION 557 

of success until, as he said, " I saw operating here cer- 
tain influences which I regretted to observe. . . . Last 
year we were successful until the Secretary of the 
Treasury came here and sat behind us, when our ac- 
tion was reversed." * He was shocked at the proposal 
of Boutwell in favor of continuing to pay in gold all our 
obligations to the end of the war. Perseverance in 
this policy must lead to disaster which should have 
been foreseen before we entered upon a system so 
palpably unwise. This policy will bring us in interest 
payments and other expenses, with gold selling at three 
to one, to an annual burden of $900,000,000 to be 
raised by taxation. " No young nation has ever borne 
such a tax. In my judgment the people would not and 
could not bear it. I would not be understood that this 
country would under any circumstances repudiate her 
debt, but she would be driven to suspend payment of 
interest for a while and that would be a disgrace not to 
be contemplated." If we had made the legal tender 
notes receivable for customs and had made our interest 
payable in such lawful money, we could have sold our 
loans at par and have maintained our notes on an 
equality with gold. Instead, what have we done? 
We have given a hundred-dollar gold bond for one 
hundred dollars in currency. That hundred dollars 
in currency can be bought, no doubt was bought, for 
forty dollars in gold, and we instantly began paying 
one hundred dollars in coin for it ; for when we pay 
the interest in gold and the principal when due, it 
is all gold from the beginning. So under this wise 
system we have actually been selling our bonds at 
1 Globe, Vol. 68, p. 1202. 



558 THE LIFE OF THADDEUS STEVENS 

sixty per cent, discount. Nor have we the merit of 
using a currency which would keep down prices. We 
have used only the currency which we ourselves have 
decried and depreciated. He pleaded that the govern- 
ment should no longer discriminate between classes of 
creditors, or declare that one form of its money was 
better than another and by legislation depreciate its 
own money. If Congress had declared that gold 
should not be legal tender and should not be received 
for duties nor paid in interest, but that United States 
notes and silver should be, gold would have depre- 
ciated below either of the others. But Congress cre- 
ated an absolute necessity for gold in proportion to 
the increasing amount of our debt and made it alone 
receivable for duties, thus declaring all other money 
inferior to it. 

Our duties last year were one hundred millions. 
The holders of gold knew that at least twenty-five 
millions must be had each quarter, no matter what it 
cost. The average amount in New York, outside the 
banks required to keep a reserve, was just about 
twenty-five millions. Whoever possessed that could 
compel the merchants to pay whatever price their con- 
sciences would permit them to ask. A few men 
could monopolize the whole of it. The struggle for 
such a monopoly would raise the price; the buyers of 
gold would indemnify themselves by exhorting from 
the merchants, who in their business receive only 
United States notes and currency. They were there- 
fore at the mercy of the speculators, — a class of men 
the most worthless in the community, — men who con- 
sume the fruits of the earth but produce nothing. 



DEBT PAYMENT AND CONTRACTION 559 

Congress made this gold, when no longer money 
nor a circulating medium, the standard of value. 
Every article came to be measured by the price of 
bullion, the extorted unnatural price paid by the mer- 
chants. Everything purchased by rich or poor, by in- 
dividuals or government, went up in price. The- 
orists have attributed this to our inflated currency. 
If this were so prices would not fluctuate with the 
fluctuations in the gold market, for the volume of 
currency does not thus vary. The merchant holds his 
goods higher or lower as the price of gold rises or 
falls. He marks and re-marks them according to the 
thermometer of the Israelites in the gold room, not 
according to the contraction or expansion of the cur- 
rency. 

Stevens did not by this intend to deny that undue 
expansion would raise prices, and that prices fall at 
contraction. He recognized that this would happen 
no matter whether the currency is in coin or paper. 
He understood and accepted the quantitative theory 
of money. But he held that the currency was never 
inflated so long as there is no more than is necessary 
for the business of the country; the proper quantity 
would depend on the business demands. He con- 
tended that the currency of the country was not swol- 
len beyond the necessary amount, since the country 
required in 1865 double the amount required before 
the war. 

It had been said that if all our loans had been made 
for "lawful money," — such money being received 
for public dues and paid for interest — the loans 
would never have been taken abroad. " That to me," 



560 THE LIFE OF THADDEUS STEVENS 

said Stevens, " would have been a merit. The annual 
net earnings of this country would have been suffi- 
cient to absorb all our loans and pay all the expenses 
of the war. Now what is sold abroad is sold at forty 
dollars on the hundred and we immediately pay one 
hundred in coin for it as interest, and we must ulti- 
mately pay one hundred in principal for every forty 
dollars when specie payments are resumed. What 
an immense sacrifice to a foolish theory ! " x On ac- 
count of his financial policy Stevens was opposed and 
denounced, as a matter of course, by those who repre- 
sented the moneyed interests and the financial centers. 
The Wall Street operators did not like him. " We 
recollect," says Mr. Forney, " how he made the dry 
bones of Wall Street brokers rattle last winter and 
the winter before." 2 This Wall Street opposition 
does not prove that Stevens' course was the one for 
the intelligent patriot to follow, though it may lend 
favor to that view. Neither, on the other hand, does 
the fact that the " expert financiers " were all against 
him prove that Stevens was either incompetent or dis- 
honest in his dealing with the problems of national 
finance. Too much is taken for granted by the ortho- 
dox on questions of money. A fair review of the 
whole discussion will show that Stevens' course was 
sincere and straightforward, and that he applied his 
great ability and intelligence in favor of a policy cal- 
culated to preserve the honor of the nation and pro- 
mote the interest of the common people. 

1 Speech, Feb. 28. 1865, Cong. Globe, Vol. 68, p. 1202. 

2 Philadelphia Press, Sept. 12, 1865. 



CHAPTER XXII 

the greenbacker; funding, debt payment and 
contraction {continued) 

IN view of this clear, positive, and persistent record 
on the subject of finance, however mistaken his 
adversaries may have considered it, it is not sur- 
prising that Stevens' ire was stirred when his name 
was used and his words quoted to give support to 
the policy of forced contraction and the immediate 
funding of all the government's paper obligations 
into gold bonds. That, almost as much as the de- 
fense of " Andy Johnsonism," drew the fire of his 
indignant wrath. 

Secretary McCulloch's annual report of November 
30, 1867, decried the greenbacks and urged their retire- 
ment. By no means should they be used to decrease 
the national debt. The Secretary made an argument 
for paying all the paper and bonded obligations of the 
government in gold, — " according to the understand- 
ing when the subscriptions were solicited and ob- 
tained." " Can there be any question," he asked, " in 
regard to the nature of this understanding?" The 
seven-thirty notes, more than eight hundred millions 
of them, were clearly by the terms of their issue pay- 
able in greenbacks. But they might also be converted 
into bonds. If they were converted into bonds, Sec- 

561 



562 THE LIFE OF THADDEUS STEYEXS 

retary McCulloch insisted that the bonds, principal as 
well as interest, were to be paid in coin. " Was not 
this," he asked, " the understanding of the Congress 
that passed the loan bills and of the people who fur- 
nished the money? Did any member of the House or 
of the Senate, prior to 1864, in the discussions of 
these bills, ever intimate that the bonds to be issued 
might be paid when redeemable in a depreciated cur- 
rency? Was there a single subscriber to the five- 
twenty bonds, or to the seven and three-tenths notes 
(which by their terms were convertible into bonds), 
who did not believe, and who was not given to under- 
stand by the agents of the government, that both prin- 
cipal and interest were payable in coin? Would the 
self-sacrificing people of the United States, even to 
sustain the government in war, have sold their 
stocks, their lands, the products of their farms, fac- 
tories and shops, and have invested the proceeds in 
these government funds if they had understood that 
the bonds were to be redeemed after five years in a 
currency of whose value they could form no reliable 
estimate? " 

Would Congress or the treasury, " when the fate 
of the nation was trembling in the balance, and when 
a failure to raise money for the support of the Fed- 
eral army would have been success to the Rebellion 
and ruin to the Union cause, have dared to attempt 
the experiment of raising money on bonds redeem- 
able — in a currency whose value might not depend 
on the solvency of the government, but upon the 
amount in circulation? The bonds were negotiated 
with the definite understanding that they were pay- 



DEBT PAYMENT AND CONTRACTION 563 

able in coin. The contracts were made in good faith 
on both sides, a part of them when the government 
was in imminent peril. Good faith and public honor, 
which to a nation are of priceless worth, require that 
these contracts should be complied with in the spirit 
in which they were made." * 

It was urged by the Secretary that when the five- 
twenties were authorized it was specifically promised 
that only $150,000,000 of the greenbacks would be 
issued. How unfair it would now be to pay bonds 
in these notes after so many more were issued and 
they had thereby become so depreciated. 

By such arguments the Secretary urged his policy 
of quick contraction and immediate resumption. 
There seems to be an intimation here that it might 
have been honest to pay in greenbacks if so many 
had not been issued. The fact that only a limited 
amount were to be issued, and for a short time, suf- 
ficiently explains, as Mr. McCulloch contended, why 
it was not deemed necessary to state that these green- 
back notes would not be used to pay the principal of 
the bonds. " It is not supposable," said Mr. McCul- 
loch, " that Congress intended to provide for funding 
the floating debt in bonds which might, in five years, 
be called in and paid in the very notes which, with 
the other treasury notes, were thus to be funded." 

The Secretary entirely neglected the maxim of law 
that " exceptions strengthen the force of a law in 
cases not excepted." An exception was made as to 
the use of these notes in paying customs dues and 
government interest. This clearly meant that they 

1 McCulloch's Report, Nov. 30, 1867. 



564 THE LIFE OF THADDEUS STEVENS 

were not to be excepted in any other respect, not even 
the payment of bond principal. Clearly there was no 
law requiring the payment of the five-twenty bonds in 
gold. No lawyer of repute, except in a brief for a 
client, would have staked his reputation by asserting 
that such payment was legally required. The legal 
advisers of the Rothschilds and the Frankfort bankers 
and other foreign bond-dealers clearly understood this 
at the time, as indicated by the low price bid for our 
bonds. 

Nor is it at all clear that the understanding of the 
five-twenty loan was as Secretary McCulloch stated it. 
What Jay Cooke may have said while acting as a 
selling agent for the government; what an assistant 
secretary of the Treasurer may have said to the ef- 
fect that it had always been the policy of the United 
States to pay gold and he presumed it would con- 
tinue so to be; what Horace Greeley may have said 
in the Tribune; or what certain members of Congress 
may have said while the Loan Act was pending in dis- 
cussion, — none of these things nor all of them to- 
gether could determine even the understanding of the 
loan — since there were also contrary understandings 
and opinions. Much less could they determine the 
scope and operation of the act itself. The law de- 
termined that, and what the law was in the case 
Stevens' legal mind perceived with perfect honesty 
and accuracy. But by the policy of Secretary Mc- 
Culloch and of those so greatly interested in the trea- 
sury management, whatever the intention and under- 
standing were, no matter at what price or with what 
kind of money the five-twenty bonds had been bought, 



DEBT PAYMENT AND CONTRACTION 565 

they should be paid in coin, and that coin obligation 
should be assumed and announced immediately. 

This policy, which Stevens abhorred, and which 
was so clearly in the interest of those who held the 
government funds and against the interest of the 
tax-paying people, was supported by Secretary Mc- 
Culloch in an unfair and partisan way with quota- 
tions from Stevens himself. " Where could a miser 
invest his money?" Stevens had asked. He an- 
swered his own question : " In United States loans 
at six per cent, redeemable in gold in twenty years, 
— the best and most valuable permanent investment 
that could be desired." Again, he had said, " I pity 
no one who has money invested in the United States 
bonds payable in gold in twenty years, with interest 
semi-annually." 

These words, uttered in the debate on the original 
Greenback Act in February, 1862, were now appro- 
priated by Stevens' opponents to sustain the policy of 
gold payments. They were quoted in the House by 
General Garfield to weaken Stevens' position in favor 
of bond payment in lawful money. Garfield sought to 
convict Stevens of promising gold payment, or security, 
on these bonds immediately, asserting that nothing 
else had been originally thought of. 1 Stevens de- 
nounced this application of his words as " a total per- 
version of the truth." " It would not be too harsh," 
he said, " to call it an absolute falsehood. I do not 
know that I should have taken any notice of what the 
papers were repeating, some of them half rebel, some 
half secession, and more of them, I suppose, in the 

1 Globe, July 23, 1868, pp. 4370 ft'. 



566 THE LIFE OF. THADDEUS STEVENS 

pay of the bondholders. I am too feeble now to ex- 
plain this whole matter, but I shall take occasion here- 
after to expose the villainy of those who charge me 
with having said on the passing of the five-twenty bill 
that its bonds were payable in coin. The whole de- 
bate from which they quote and all my remarks which 
they have cited were made on an entirely different 
bill. I spoke only of the payment of gold after 
twenty years, as no one doubted the resumption of 
specie payments." 

The gold question, as brought into issue between 
the Secretary of the Treasury and the country in 1866 
and 1867, had not arisen when Stevens made the 
speech now quoted to embarrass him. It was in this 
case as it was in those to which reference is made in a 
preceding chapter, — Stevens' words on one proposal 
were used as if they were uttered on an entirely dif- 
ferent proposal. He was right in denouncing this 
practise as a downright perversion of his ideas 
and his record upon this financial legislation. He 
cautioned the public against putting faith " in the 
fabrications of demagogues and usurers " * and, at a 
moment when he was not permitted to reply to Gar- 
field's use of McCulloch's words, he promised that 
when the proper time came he would " show that 
there is not a word of truth in what either of them 
says." 2 

So far as the record shows these were the last 
words that Stevens ever uttered in the House. The 
" proper time " when he would have shown the falsity 

1 Globe, July 22, 1868. 

2 Globe, July 23, 1868. 



DEBT PAYMENT AND CONTRACTION 567 

of the charge against him in his own invincible way 
never came. The feebleness to which he referred 
had laid its final hold upon him and in less than three 
weeks he was dead. 1 He did not have the strength to 
make good his promise, but his record is his sufficient 
vindication. Garfield had said, no doubt without the 
least intention to accuse falsely, that, so far as he 
could learn, the first word ever spoken in Congress 
suggesting the possibility of paying the five-twenty 
bonds in anything but coin had been used by Stevens 
in the discussions on the Loan Act of 1863. This was 
a year after his utterance on the first Legal Tender Act 
that, as McCulloch would have the public believe, 
indicated Stevens' assurance that the bonds were to 
be paid in coin. The words were the words of 
Stevens but the application that was now made of 
them was misleading. They had not been uttered on 
any such issue as was now presented. It was but a 
play of politics in favor of a policy that certain finan- 
cial leaders and their political supporters were seeking 
to carry to a conclusion. The record clearly shows 
that Stevens was then speaking (February, 1862) in 
favor of notes and bonds issued under a policy and for 
a length of time, as he thought, that would have 
brought, if they did not constantly keep, both notes 
and bonds at a par with specie. Then it would be 
a matter of indifference whether specie were paid 
or not. Another policy was adopted, — a policy that 
had as its result, if not as its object, the depreciation 
of the greenback notes that bonds might be bought 
with them and then the appreciation of the bonds by 
1 He died on August n, 1868. 



568 THE LIFE OF THADDEUS STEVENS 

their being funded into gold securities. The result 
of this policy Stevens foresaw and foretold, and his 
face was ever set against it in stout and unbending 
opposition. What manner of fairness is there in 
using the words that he had uttered in favor of his 
own policy as if they supported any part of an op- 
posite policy that he had always reprobated and con- 
demned ? 

Stevens was on record in too many instances on the 
subject of paying government bonds in greenbacks 
where the law and the contract permitted, to leave 
any one in doubt either as to his policy or consistency. 

While the Loan Act of 1863 was under discussion 
Stevens insisted that the principal of its proposed ten- 
forty bonds was payable in lawful money unless coin 
were specified. He insisted that the people should be 
allowed to know exactly in what kind of money these 
obligations would be paid. He offered an amend- 
ment specifying coin, both for the long time bonds 
and for the short time treasury notes that were to be 
issued. " If the amendment be voted down," he said, 
" the people will see that they will be payable in what- 
ever at the time is lawful money." Morrill, of Ver- 
mont, accused him of wishing to put the bill into 
such a shape that it would not pass the House. His 
amendment was voted down, whereupon Stevens re- 
marked, " It is evident that these bonds are to be paid 
in shin-plasters." Later, the long time bonds, the 
ten-forties of 1863, were made payable in coin, but 
the three-year treasury notes were redeemable in 
" lawful money." They were " a kind of indebted- 



DEBT PAYMENT AND CONTRACTION 569 

ness that was to be held by the people," 1 with interest 
as an inducement to keep them from circulating, — a 
gold interest which the banks would get as fast as it 
accumulated. 

This was the discriminating policy that Stevens was 
always trying to prevent. His interpretation of the 
law led the bond-dealers to see to it that " coin " was 
put into the contract for the new long time bonds. 

Again, in discussing the Loan Bill of 1866, address- 
ing himself to the first report of Secretary McCul- 
loch, he denounced as " most extraordinary " the 
recommendation that the five-twenties be paid in coin. 
" For whose benefit was this? For that of European 
capitalists. Those men holding now $600,000,000 
will have 30 per cent, added to the value of their 
bonds by a single act of legislation. These bonds 
were purchased by European capitalists when gold 
was at 250, — at 60 per cent, discount. If now made 
payable in gold they will obtain $100 for every $40 
paid out. The idea that the nation is to be benefited 
by such a proceeding is beyond my comprehension. 
Doubtless, if I had my pocket full of five-twenties I 
could realize the propriety of making both interest and 
principal payable in gold after it had been understood 
for five years that that principal should be payable 
in currency. If there is wisdom in the project I con- 
fess that to my poor intellect it is inscrutable and past 
finding out." 2 

He denounced the contraction provided for in the 

1 Morrill, of Vermont, Jan. 22, 1863, Globe, p. 454. 
-Globe, March 16, 1866. 



570 THE LIFE OF THADDEUS STEVENS 

Loan Act of 1866, an act that gave such unlimited 
power over the currency to the Secretary of the Treas- 
ury, whose policy Stevens constantly deprecated. 
" Was ever such discretion confided to a single man, 
— to borrow wherever he pleases, at any rate he 
pleases? Wise men would never confer such power 
on the ablest and purest man that ever lived." * 

After such a record was it surprising that Stevens 
suffered some vexation of spirit when his words were 
perverted by a high official of the treasury, in sup- 
port of a policy which he had so constantly con- 
demned? The depth of his feeling upon this subject 
is shown by his oft-quoted utterance in the House 
during the last session that he ever attended. It was 
in July, 1868, after the presidential nominations had 
been made and the party platforms adopted. It is 
well known with what vigor and intensity Stevens 
hated the Democratic party. That party's candidate 
for Vice-President in 1868, Mr. Frank P. Blair, of 
Missouri, was especially distasteful to Stevens, partly 
for personal reasons, partly on account of the revolu- 
tionary policy that Blair had proposed for the un- 
doing of the congressional work in reconstruction. 2 
When Stevens heard it suggested in the House that 
certain loans were payable only in gold, he broke in 
boldly with his well-known declaration: "After 
they fall due they are payable in money, just as the 
gentleman understands money, just as I understand 
it, just as we all understood it when we passed the 
law authorizing that loan; just as it was a dozen times 

1 March 16, 1866. Globe. 

2 See Blair's Brodhead Letter. 



DEBT PAYMENT AND CONTRACTION 571 

explained upon the floor by the chairman of the Com- 
mittee on Ways and Means when called upon by gentle- 
men to explain what it meant, and just as the whole 
House agreed that it meant. I want to say that if I 
knew that any party in this country would go for 
paying in coin that which is payable in money, thus 
enhancing it one-half; if I knew there was such a 
determination this day on the part of my party, I 
would vote for the other side, Frank Blair and all. 
I would vote for no such swindle upon the taxpayers 
of this country; I would vote for no such speculation 
in favor of the large bondholders, the millionaires 
who took advantage of our folly in granting them 
coin payment of interest. And I declare — well, it is 
hard to say it — but if even Frank Blair stood upon 
the platform of paying the bonds according to the 
contract, and the Republican candidates stood upon 
the platform of paying bloated speculators twice the 
amount which we agreed to pay them, then I would 
vote for Frank Blair, even if a worse man than Sey- 
mour headed the ticket. That is all I want to say." x 

This expression, indicating that Stevens might sup- 
port the Democratic party in the campaign, caused his 
Republican followers some annoyance. It met with 
criticism and dissent among many of his loyal sup- 
porters at home. On July 23, 1868, Stevens wrote to 
the Lancaster Express saying that he " had not de- 
clared for Seymour and Blair and never expected to. 
I have only declared," he said, " against fools and 
swindlers who have fabricated the most atrocious 
falsehoods as to my position on the currency ques- 

1 Globe, July 17, 1868, p. 417S. 



572 THE LIFE OF THADDEUS STEVENS 

tion." He promised when he was a little stronger to 
give " a full history of the matter." * The editor ex- 
pressed the hope that when he got strong enough to 
write the " history " referred to he would " avoid 
the distinguishing characteristic of his letter," since 
calling his opponents by such endearing terms as 
" fools and swindlers " furnished no evidence " either 
of his own wisdom or of the strength of his position." 

The " history," as we know, could never be pre- 
pared. But a few days later, July 30, 1868, Stevens 
seemed relieved to be able to write to his home paper 
that the gold question was settled by " the comprom- 
ise funding bill " of Senator Sherman. He ad- 
mitted that the vexed question of what kind of cur- 
rency the five-twenties were payable in, had been dis- 
cussed in an unbecoming temper and style, so far as 
he was concerned. The settlement now arrived at 
provided for bonds equal in amount to the five- 
twenties with interest at four per cent, payable in coin 
after thirty and forty years. This reduced the na- 
tional loan to uniformity, informed every bondholder 
what and how much he is to receive, and showed, as 
Stevens had contended, that " there was a difference 
in value between the original five-twenties and what 
they would be if payable in coin." 

The fact that Stevens, while descending to his 
grave, seemed relieved to accept this so-called com- 
promise, which was but a meager concession to his 
contention, should not be taken to indicate that he had 
in the least lost faith in the rightfulness of the cause 
for which he had been contending. The gold-paying 

1 Lancaster Express, July 25, 1868. 



DEBT PAYMENT AND CONTRACTION 573 

policy and the rejection of the greenback, which he 
had denounced so vigorously, was but part of a sys- 
tem, — a system of dishonored and mutilated na- 
tional notes and of gold interest, — which, as we have 
seen, Stevens had opposed with all his might from 
the beginning. His opposition here should be con- 
sidered as a part of his opposition to the system as a 
whole, — that war system of finance, the like of which 
as he said, " no human folly had ever before 
witnessed." 

This system or policy he brought into public review 
by an open letter to an old German constituent, John 
Gyger, a banker friend in Lancaster. Gyger wrote a 
letter to Stevens which the latter prompted, if he 
did not compose, and Stevens answered the letter. 
Stevens thus made for himself an opportunity to dis- 
cuss the money question. 

He apparently wrote with deep feeling and convic- 
tion, as one would who had been the witness and an- 
tagonist of a great wrong and injustice that had been 
cunningly wrought upon an unsuspecting people. 
" Would to God," he said, " that my intellectual vigor 
might increase in proportion to my disease that I 
might properly depict this important subject to the 
American people." 

The appeal to commercial integrity and national 
honor in support of this " monstrous swindle on the 
part of European capitalists " excited his contempt 
and spirit of satire. " Who are these reasoners," he 
asked, " who talk so learnedly of the laws of finance 
and the morality of human dealings, whose con- 
sciences are so raw and stick out so far from their 



574 THE LIFE OF] THADDEUS STEVENS 

excited covering that no pharmaceutist can heal their 
inward wound ? " The plain truth was as Stevens 
saw it, this system that had been instituted by the 
bullion dealers was but " a gambling game in the two 
unequal legal tender moneys." " Hopes were excited 
much more rampant than the lottery dealers or the 
faro players; and in the belief that a single turn of 
the cards would bring up the holder's fortune, 
palaces were opened for the purpose of inviting specu- 
lation and dealings in this new system of gambling. 
Some became rich while others went to beggary. 
Everything became excited and inflated, from the 
commonest fabric to the most valuable estate. Thus 
the cost of the war was vastly increased, but the 
honest Jews of the gold room, Shadrach, Meshach, 
and Abednego, came out unsinged." 

Stevens said he would not begrudge the poor specu- 
lator or the rich capitalist his earning who has en- 
tered the gold room a beggar and come out with a 
princely fortune. That is not his folly, but the folly 
of the government which " though a hundred times 
warned would never take heed." 

He believed that this gambling of the " gold 
room " was directly promoted by the policy of estab- 
lishing two kinds of money and making gold a fa- 
vored kind. " The government's gold sales " were 
used to help on the speculative tendency, and in some 
instances, as Stevens believed, the treasuiy seemed 
to be controlled in the interests of the gold brokers. 1 

1 Stevens had reasons for these suspicions and he was not 
without knowledge on gold manipulations. In 1866 the govern- 
ment offered gold for sale by Van Dyck. the assistant treas- 
urer, through one Myers, a broker, between whom and the 



DEBT PAYMENT AND CONTRACTION 575 

The seven-thirty notes of 1861, issued when we had 
no other currency than gold, were paid in greenbacks 
in 1864; the gold-paying public creditor for the gold 
he had paid to the government was obliged either to 
take his pay in greenbacks for commercial use or take 
them and convert them into bonds. That whole loan 
was thus redeemed. These were short time, little 
creditors, among the common people, the " hand to 
mouth men," who had made a temporary loan of their 
good gold to save the government. The big gold 
brokers had no compunctions about cheating them, 
but the heavy long bond creditors you must not cheat ; 
you must let them cheat you. 1 The loans were to be 

Secretary of the Treasury there was a family connection ; and 
it was charged that Myers owed his appointment as selling 
agent of the government entirely to this family relationship. 
Myers and another broker played into each other's hands, 
the treasury, through Myers, selling gold till the price came 
down from 140 to 124, Myers' partner buying heavily at the 
lower figures. The partner then held his accumulations till the 
price went up to 144, the merchants who needed the gold for 
customs dues being compelled to go to those who had it. Thou- 
sands of dollars changed hands. It was a plain case of Wall 
Street thimble-rigging, and the treasury officials were sus- 
piciously close to the deal. A Philadelphia merchant com- 
plained of these processes in a letter to Stevens and Thomas J. 
Stewart, of New York, repeatedly wrote to him of them, urging 
public exposure. The favored brokers knew when the treas- 
ury would offer gold and depress the price. Stewart said that 
" the treasury of the United States in this city has been used 
by Van Dyck, Myers, and their secret association as an enor- 
mous fund in their gold speculating. Millions have been made 
and will continue to be made unless a vote of censure is passed 
by Congress." The result was a resolution offered in the 
House calling on Secretary McCulloch for an explanation. 
Stewart expressed the hope that Stevens would recover his 
health and " stand on the quarter-deck of the House while this 
battle rages." Men believed that God had given to Thaddeus 
Stevens a heart of honesty and a tongue with a hot vocabulary 
for just fights as these abuses called for. Stevens' Correspond- 
ence, 1866. See New York Journal of Commerce, June 7, [866 
1 This is adapted as expressing Stevens' view from a speech 
of B. F. Butler, Nov. 26, 27, 1867, Globe, Appendix, p. 29, 1st 
Sess., Fortieth Cong. 



576 THE LIFE OF THADDEUS STEVENS 

paid in coin only when they had been contracted for 
in large job lots for rich capitalists or foreign holders, 
and when they had been bought with cheap depre- 
ciated money, — a money that had been made cheap by 
the very policy of these gold dealers. 

The claim had been set up that these bonds were 
payable in gold because Stevens had not said when the 
act was passed that the principal was payable in cur- 
rency. Stevens retorted that he had not said so be- 
cause he did not suppose that anybody but a fool 
would think they were not payable in currency. The 
" old man sarcastic," as Ben Butler called him, was 
generally able to take care of himself in these con- 
gressional bouts. 

When in 1862 the legal tender measure was forced 
by necessity, " no one, I suppose," said Stevens, 
" doubted that the loans of the United States of 
every description were payable in money of the United 
States of every description. But to change that as- 
pect the New York money changers appeared, Jew 
and Gentile, mingling in sweet communion, to dis- 
cover some cunning invention to make in a day what 
it would take weeks for honest men to earn. They 
went to the Ways and Means Committee and asked 
that the interest be payable in coin, leaving the princi- 
pal as it was. The committee utterly rejected the ab- 
surd proposition of two currencies — 'two legal tend- 
ers — in the same empire and for the same com- 
modities. The brokers then resorted to the Secre- 
tary of the Treasury. He was more easily persuaded 
and went with them to the Senate Committee to urge 
the change. The Senate agreed and sent back the bill 



DEBT PAYMENT AND CONTRACTION 577 

so amended. The House disagreed, but in confer- 
ence was forced to consent to make the interest pay- 
able in a different kind of currency than the loan it- 
self. To get the coin customs dues were made pay- 
able in that. Thus as any one can see, the Congress 
declared that while she created two kinds of money, 
she had made them of unequal value and for different 
purposes." 

Stevens had once made a calculation to ascertain 
the difference between the two modes of paying, and 
he had brought in bills in hope of saving the differ- 
ence. " But each session the noise of the gold room 
was much louder than what I was pleased to call the 
voice of reason. Take $100 and count it into green- 
backs, when gold was high. It will produce $281. 
So convert or use it every day for a year and you 
have $66,000, — the gold-bearers costing the govern- 
ment that much more than the legal tenders. The 
gold exchange on the basis of the daily cost of the 
war cost the government $1,600,000,000 more than 
the straight use of the greenbacks would have done." 

He believed that the present and prospective busi- 
ness of the country would fairly absorb an amount of 
currency large enough to redeem these bonds as they 
became due, say $4,000,000 monthly, so as impercept- 
ibly to affect the currency. Business men were com- 
plaining that the retiring of $4,000,000 of currency 
without a substitute causes a stringency in the money 
market very injurious to business. The additional 
issue of that amount would be better and would be 
taken up without injuring business by undue expan- 
sion. 



578 THE LIFE OF THADDEUS STEVENS 

Stevens denied that he wished to delay specie pay- 
ments, and he claimed to believe, with everybody else, 
that that was a desirable end to be attained as soon 
as possible. His notion about resumption was that 
the sooner the government converts all its indebted- 
ness into a paper currency which the people will be 
willing to accept as a long loan and to a considerable 
amount, the sooner it would be able to resume specie 
payments. If the end could ever have been accom- 
plished in this way, the course would certainly have 
been a longer way round though it might have been 
easier. Herein lay Stevens' error and inconsistency, 
as a Greenbacker. His true course lay, as he hardly 
seemed to perceive, in disregarding specie payments 
altogether, and in looking upon the use of gold and 
silver in the currency as altogether unnecessary and 
incidental, as something that might come in time by 
the natural order of trade and development, but 
about which there need be no concern. He claimed 
anxiety to resume the use of coin as a legal tender not 
because it is any better as a measure of value or as a 
token of debt, but because it had been adopted by 
most of the other civilized nations. " But I do not 
wish," he said, " to resume by breaking the bones of 
every manufacturer, mechanic, and agriculturist for 
the benefit of foreign operators who have now their 
fixed capital in these loans." 

To pay these loans according to the contract would 
have saved, according to Stevens' calculation, §72>7r 
000,000. That is about the sum which, as alleged, 
the greenbacks had added to the cost of the war. 



DEBT PAYMENT AND CONTRACTION 579 

" But tender consciences have compelled the nation td 
pay this debt in coin because Jay Cooke and the Tri- 
bune have pledged their word that it should be so 
paid. I have no objection to their paying it, but I 
dislike to take the balance left me by the rebels to pay 
my part." 

How does the case appear to a plain honest man, 
— to the farmer or laborer who earns an honest living 
by the sweat of his brow? Is his conscience violated, 
his elemental sense of justice outraged by an honest 
payment according to the contract? Here is the case 
as Stevens illustrated it : A capitalist takes $400 in 
gold. It buys $1000 in bonds by first buying $1000 
in greenbacks. At the next yearly interest payment 
he gets 6 per cent, in gold on $1000. That is 15 per 
cent, above taxes on his investment. He continues to 
draw at that rate while the debt runs. He now de- 
mands that the principal also be paid in gold, which 
would net 250 per cent, more on the investment. 
" This is what they call honor, conscience, justice, 
through the custom of the country, and they tell the 
farmers of America that they are in honor bound to 
pay the money dealers of Europe this enormous rate 
to save their property from destruction; and the 
moral (?) men of New York denounce you and me 
and others as dishonorable robbers and swindlers if 
we do not in forty years quadruple the capital of the 
Rothschilds, Goldsmiths, and other large money deal- 
ers. I must beg leave to judge for myself of this 
monstrous proposition and to see whether I am in 
honor bound to pay any more than he demands who, 



580 THE LIFE OF THADDEUS STEVENS 

with pistol at my breast, commands me to stand and 
deliver." 1 

Such are the merits of the issue on funding and 
paying the war debt as Stevens brought them into re- 
view a few months before his death. 

The capitalistic press denounced the policy advo- 
cated by Stevens as a " greenback confiscation," as 
" a wholesale act of repudiation," and as " a breach 
of faith toward a class, the bankers and money 
lenders, who gave most noble succor to the nation 
in her hour of trial," as one of the clerical teachers 
of financial honor saw fit to express it. 2 The New 
York press generally referred to Stevens' views as 
"eccentric." But Stevens' "eccentric" views con- 
sisted merely in constant opposition to the financial 
policy pursued by the government for six full years, 
and in a belief that by that policy the government had 
thrown away millions by mismanagement, and that 
those who loaned money to the government were paid 
back two or three times over what they were justly 
entitled to. A fair perusal of the record is likely to 
lead the unbiased layman, if not the " professional fin- 
ancier," to Stevens' conclusion. The system of 
greenbacks and gold payments adopted from 1862 to 

1 Open Letter of Stevens to John Gyger, Banker, Nov. 4, 1867, 
in Cincinnati Commercial, Nov. 12, 1867. 

2 " Repudiation," " cheating," " dishonor," " destroying the 
national credit," were the cheap terms of abuse employed 
against those who opposed the gold-bond, specie-paying policy. 
Of course, Stevens did not escape these flings. " But, if in all 
this broad land," said Mr. Forney, who knew Stevens well, 
" there is a man who hates repudiation more than Thaddeus 
Stevens we do not know him. There was a time in Pennsyl- 
vania when he fought against that crime and crushed it with 
his Titanic blows." Philadelphia Press, Sept. 12, 1865. 



DEBT PAYMENT AND CONTRACTION 581 

1869 richly deserved Stevens' " oft defeated " efforts 
in resistance as well as his " oft-repeated " denuncia- 
tions. For one may well doubt whether there was 
ever a more outrageous fleecing and robbery of a pa- 
triotic people than that perpetrated through the in- 
fluence of capitalists and money lenders by the 
manipulation of government finance during and im- 
mediately following the American Civil War. 

The shrewd and the unscrupulous rich are ever 
seeking to use the government and control the laws 
for the exploitation of the masses. The cunning 
hand was at work while true men were at the front 
in the dark and trying days of the Civil War. While 
the homes of the nation were anxiously watching the 
fortunes of war; while the mass of the people, in pa- 
triotic ardor, were seeking to safeguard the welfare 
of the Union, there were selfish and unscrupulous 
men who seized upon the situation merely for the base 
purpose of making money out of the necessities of 
the country. To gain cent per cent, was the only call 
which the war and the state of the country presented 
to them. The Old Commoner despised such men, 
and they knew full well that they could not use him 
for their purposes. He withstood them to their face. 
Their course, then, was to break him down, to destroy 
the weight of his influence and opinions with the 
country. Untrained as he was for this special prob- 
lem; worried by the distractions of a thousand public 
cares in many directions; opposed as he was by the 
organs of traditional and orthodox opinion on ques- 
tions of money, it is surprising that he put up as 



582 THE LIFE OF THADDEUS STEVENS 

strong a fight as he did on the financial issues that he 
was forced to meet. 

He was defeated in the policies that he sought 
to have adopted. But the ideas that he accepted and 
promulgated were not destined to disappear. The 
struggle that he had upon these questions and the op- 
position that he encountered led him to take a radical 
and an advanced position on the subject of money. 
He went to the root of the question, as his radical 
mind and temper led him to do, and he announced 
principles of money utterly subversive of the gold 
standard and the moneyed interest. He came to be- 
lieve in a uniform national currency, issued as bills of 
credit by the general government alone. " Money is 
the creature of law," he said, " just what the law 
makes it." He had come to the faith that the gov- 
ernment has the constitutional power to make money 
of whatever material it chooses, whether metal, paper, 
leather, tin, nickel, greenbacks, or old bones. The 
material does not matter, except for convenience. It 
is quantity and use that count. If money be too 
abundant or too scarce it is of no consequence 
whether it be coin or paper. One thousand million 
too much of gold is just as injurious in inflating prices 
as one thousand million too much of greenbacks. 
And he desired that the volume of money be regulated 
by a sovereign representative government in the in- 
terests of the toilers and producers and not by combi- 
nations of capitalists controlling the gold of the world 
in the interests of moneyed classes. 

These views of money have been accepted by mil- 
lions of his countrymen since the day when Stevens 



DEBT PAYMENT AND CONTRACTION 583 

contended for them without much public support. If 
it be said that experience has not vindicated them, it 
may be answered that in many respects they have been 
vindicated and that Time, the unceasing worker, has 
not yet wrought out all the causes and issues on that 
subject which are in store. By the " experts " and 
" financiers " the doctrines of Stevens have been rid- 
iculed as the vagaries of foolishness. But in the light 
of fifty years of controversy on questions of finance, 
it is not unreasonable to say that the final word of 
wisdom on money and its uses may be found to be 
much nearer to the ideas of Stevens, the Greenbacker, 
than his hostile critics ever conceived it possible to 
believe. 



CHAPTER XXIII 

CLOSING DAYS AND CHARACTERISTICS 

A FTER Stevens' last formal speech on impeach- 
■*■ *■ ment his words in the House were confined to 
brief colloquy while he was suffering under weakness 
of body. 1 

Two days later in July, 1868, he offered from the 
Committee on Education in the District of Columbia 
a bill to establish free schools for the District. It 
was the last measure he ever offered in the House, — 
a fitting final act of his career, as the first cause that 
had brought great honor to his name was the cause 
of free education. He would have no child in the 
republic grow up in ignorance. This education of 
the children for citizenship should not be only the 
concern of the church and of private beneficence but it 
should be the highest and constant concern of the 
state; and not of the commonwealth alone, but of the 
nation at large, in every case wherein the power to 
care for this great cause had been bestowed. 

Thaddeus Stevens died in Washington City at 
twelve o'clock midnight, August II, 1868, aged 
seventy-six years, four months and seven days. The 
closing scenes of his life were of an impressive char- 
acter. His nephew, Thaddeus Stevens Jr., and Mrs. 
Lydia Smith, his colored housekeeper, were at his 

1 Sec p. 505. 

584 



CLOSING DAYS 5S5 

bedside, also Sister Loretta and Sister Genevieve, 
colored sisters of charity of the Providence Hospital, 
who had been visiting him daily in his illness and 
whose benevolent and charitable work had been so 
heartily supported by Stevens in personal and legisla- 
tive efforts. 1 

On the afternoon of his death he talked with cheer- 
fulness and animation. The doctor had changed his 
medicine and Stevens, noticing the change, remarked, 
" Well, this is a square fight," and his face lightened 
up with a grim smile of mingled humor and deter- 
mination. He commented on Seward's purchase of 
Alaska saying that it was " the biggest thing in his 
life," and if he could have purchased Samana it would 
have been " the crowning event of his whole career." 
He remarked to a relative, Simon Stevens, " Simon, 
the great questions of the day are reconstruction, 
the finances, and the railway system of the coun- 
try." He seemed somewhat anxious about the state 
of the country because of indication of trouble in 
Louisiana. He referred with kindness and confi- 
dence to William M. Evarts whom he called " a sound 
lawyer and statesman," who would " so advise the 
President as to make unnecessary a meeting of Con- 
gress in September," which Stevens was anxious to 
avoid. At seven o'clock two colored ministers, Rev- 
erend Mr. Hall and Reverend Mr. Reed, arrived and 
requested permission to see Mr. Stevens and pray with 
him. When asked if they should do so he said, " Oh, 

_ 1 Mr. Stevens had secured a special congressional appropria- 
tion of thirty thousand dollars for this institution, in spite of 
great opposition. It was a Washington charity for negroes. 



586 THE LIFE OF THADDEUS STEVENS 

yes." As they approached his bedside he looked 
toward them, nodded his head and smiled. Reverend 
Mr. Hall said, " Mr. Stevens, you have the prayers of 
all the colored people of the country." About ten min- 
utes before his death Sister Loretta requested the per- 
mission of his friends to perform the baptismal rite, 
and no objection being offered, the impressive cere- 
mony was performed amid reverential silence. Mrs. 
Smith, the colored housekeeper, knelt at the foot of the 
bed while the sisters, also kneeling, continued to read 
the prayers for the departing soul. The plaintive tones 
of the holy sisters, the repressed and troubled breath- 
ing of the dying man, mingled with the sobs of his 
nephew and of his faithful friend and housekeeper, 
Mrs. Smith, were indications of coining death. The 
annalist relates that " the clock struck twelve, and in 
three minutes he was dead. His last hour was one 
of tranquillity, and when death came he passed calmly 
and peacefully away as though falling into a sweet 
slumber." * 

The body lay in state in the rotunda of the Capitol 
for two days and was then taken to Lancaster by 
special train. At the tomb the Reverend Bishop Big- 
ler of the Moravian church read the Ninetieth Psalm. 
Reverend E. H. Nevin of the Presbyterian church 
offered prayer. The services of the Lutheran church 
were read by Reverend W. V. Getwald, and Doctor 
Wombert delivered an address on the life and services 
of Stevens. 

1 Lancaster Express, August 12, 1868, and the current number 
of the Philadelphia Press. 



CLOSING DAYS 587 

The death of Stevens occurred four days before his 
expected renomination for Congress. Martin S. Fry, 
the chairman of the Republican County Committee, 
after consultation with party leaders, recommended 
that, " as a fitting tribute to the memory of our most 
able and distinguished champion of freedom and jus- 
tice the unanimous vote of the party be cast for the 
name of Thaddeus Stevens in the ensuing primary- 
meetings and that arrangements be made later for 
filling the vacancy." This was done as a last political 
tribute and testimonial of the confidence and esteem 
in which Thaddeus Stevens was held by his constit- 
uents and neighbors. 

Among the papers in the court records of Lancaster 
County may be found the last will and testament of 
Thaddeus Stevens. Many of the items of the will are 
significant and characteristic. The biographer de- 
ciphered from the difficult handwriting of Stevens 
himself the following bequests : 

" To the town of Peacham, Vermont, one thousand dol- 
lars at six per cent., in aid of the Library Association which 
was founded at the Caledonia County Academy, — if the 
same is still in existence. 

" To the Trustees of the graveyard in which my mother 
and brother are buried in the town of Peacham, Vermont, 
five hundred dollars, the interest to be annually paid to the 
sexton on condition that he keep the graves in good order 
and plant roses and other cheerful flowers at each of the 
four corners of said graves every spring. 

" If either of said legacies should lapse the same shall go 
to the support of the Baptist church, or meeting, nearest to 
Danville Center, my native town in Vermont." 



88 THE LIFE OF THADDEUS STEVENS 



To his housekeeper, Lydia Smith, he gave five hun- 
dred dollars a year for the rest of her life, or, if she 
chose instead, she might have a lump sum of five thou- 
sand dollars. She was permitted to occupy his house 
for five years. 

To his nephew, Thaddeus W. Stevens, of Indian- 
apolis, he gave two thousand dollars. He provided, 
also, that if at the end of any five years Thaddeus 
should show that he had totally abstained from all in- 
toxicating drinks during that time, the trustees might 
convey to him one- fourth of the whole property; and 
if at the end of the next successive five-year period 
Thaddeus should show that he had totally abstained 
from all intoxicating drinks, he should have another 
fourth of the property, and, if he fulfilled the same 
condition for another five-year period, he was to have 
the whole property in fee simple. 

Here was a lesson and an inducement to temper- 
ance for young Thaddeus, but he was not able to bear 
it. He was not able to qualify for his inheritance 
under the terms of the will, and, as in that case pro- 
vided, the remaining aggregate property was to go 
" to erect, establish and endow a house of refuge for 
the relief of homeless orphans." The sum of twenty 
thousand dollars was to be expended in building, and 
the orphans were to be provided a home till they had 
reached the age of fifteen, and longer if they were 
infirm. They were to be educated carefully in the 
English branches and in all industrial pursuits. No 
preference was to be shown on account of race or 
color in admission or treatment, and no one should be 
excluded on account of the race or religion of his 






CLOSING DAYS 589 

parents, and all should be educated alike in the same 
classes, and fed at the same table. 

In a separate codicil to his will Stevens provided 
that one thousand dollars be paid to Pennsylvania Col- 
lege, at Gettysburg, for the use of Stevens Hall. In 
another he said, " I bought John Shertz' property at 
sheriff's sale at much below its value. I only want my 
own. All except three hundred dollars, the proceeds 
of it and the interest, I direct shall be returned to the 
estate." In another codicil he provided that one thou- 
sand dollars be paid to the Baptist church in Lancaster 
for a new church building. " I do this," he said, " out 
of respect to the memory of my mother to whom I owe 
what little of prosperity I have had on earth, and 
which, small as it is, I desire emphatically to acknowl- 
edge." 

The will is of interest since it reveals something of 
the character of Stevens and the interests and pur- 
poses of his life. It was more than twenty years be- 
fore the estate was finally settled up by the admin- 
istrators and then it was found that the proceeds and 
residue of the property amounted to about forty 
thousand dollars. This sum was supplemented by an 
appropriation by the state of Pennsylvania and was 
devoted to the establishment of Stevens Institute, an 
industrial school for poor boys and girls. Its worthy 
site and buildings in the suburbs are an ornament to 
the city of Lancaster. The work this school is doing 
and will continue to do will be a fitting memorial in 
the years to come to the commoner of Pennsylvania. 

It would not seem at all fitting to close a biography 
of Thaddeus Stevens without some reference to the 



590 THE LIFE OF THADDEUS STEVENS 

anecdotes and stories that gathered about his life; — 
especially is this so since these anecdotes aid, in a 
way, in the revelation of his character. 

The Stevens stories are innumerable, — perhaps 
about no other man in American history have more 
good stories been gathered. Colonel John W. Forney 
in his sketch of Stevens 1 says that no justice can be 
done to the story side of his life, and that " if some 
congenial Boswell had been by his side there might 
have been collected a volume of his sayings." It is 
to be regretted that a suitable and reliable collection 
was not made by a contemporary and friend compe- 
tent to perform that task. Stevens' wit was spontane- 
ous, never studied nor artificial. His jokes sprang 
from the circumstance in which he found himself; 
none was ever lugged in for the sake of the joke it- 
self. He was not a story teller, but he was strong in 
retort, in repartee, in quaint interrogatory. His fine 
sense of humor he carried with him in disease and af- 
fliction even to his death-bed. His friend John Hick- 
man visited him in his last illness, and remarked how 
well he appeared. " Ah, John," was Stevens' quick 
reply, " it is not my appearance but my disappearance 
that troubles me." When a House member was pacing 
the aisle, walking up and down and back and forth 
during his speech, Stevens, after watching the peri- 
patetic performance for a while, called out to this mem- 
ber, " Mr. do you expect to collect mileage for 

that speech? " 

Mr. Justin S. Morrill who served with Stevens for 
many years in the House says that " never, indeed, was 
1 Published in the Philadelphia Press, August, 1868. 



CHARACTERISTICS 591 

wit of all varieties, coarse and fine, exhibited in more 
bewildering profusion. He daily wasted ... in his 
distribution of mirth, sense, and satire ... a capital 
sufficient, could it have been preserved, to rival almost 
any of the acknowledged masters among the collo- 
quial wits of this or possibly of any age." * Much of 
his wit was personal, too, frequently partaking of the 
gall of bitterness, but it was generally remarked even 
by those who suffered from his unerring shafts that 
no man was more ready to repair the injuries he in- 
flicted. Once his vote was solicited at a general elec- 
tion in Lancaster by an impecunious and incompetent 
man who was a candidate for " Poor Commissioner/'V 

" Certainly," said Stevens, in a most amiable way, 
" we should make you Poor Commissioner, for I know 
of no one in all Lancaster county who would make a 
poorer Commissioner than you." 

A judge in court, somewhat ruffled by Stevens' evi- 
dent disgust and subdued expressions of displeasure 
at some of the court's rulings, intimated that Stevens, 
if he were not careful, might be arraigned for man- 
ifesting contempt of court. " Manifesting contempt, 
your Honor ! " said Stevens. " Sir, I am doing my 
very best to conceal it." 

It was always a delight to the man, who despised a 
trimmer, and to his party adversaries who admired 
the bold and honest candor with which Stevens ex- 
pressed his political opinions and programs, to listen 
to his frequent exposures of the pretenses, conceal- 
ments, evasions, and the wavering weakness of some of 
his party associates. A notable instance was in his 

1 Senate Memorial Speeches, Globe, December 18, 1868. 



592 THE LIFE OF THADDEUS STEVENS 

proposing that messengers be sent to the lobby of the 
House to inform the weak-kneed Northern Whigs who 
had dodged the vote on the historic Fugitive Slave Law 
in 1850, that they might safely return to the hall now 
that the vote had been taken and the bill had passed. 
On one occasion a member who seemed to have no con- 
victions on any question and who often confessed that 
he seldom investigated a subject without finding him- 
self a neutral, asked for a leave of absence and a pair. 
" Mr. Speaker," said Stevens, " I do not rise to ob- 
ject, but to suggest that the honorable member need 
not ask this favor for he can easily pair off with him- 
self." 

He wished his party colleagues and his party to 
stand out boldly. In June, 1868, a few weeks before 
his death, he expressed his dissatisfaction with the plat- 
form of his party which had just been framed by his 
party convention for the contest of that memorable 
year. He called it " tame and cowardly " on the sub- 
ject of the suffrage, which his party was unwilling to 
confer upon the negroes in the North. " For twenty 
years before the war," he wrote, " the North behaved 
like poltroons in all their legislative controversies with 
slavery. They have much more physical than moral 
courage. . . . What did the bold men at Chicago mean 
by selling the right of suffrage? The Declaration of 
Independence contains no such folly, no such wicked- 
ness. We can not maintain liberty by skulking." He 
liked stiff-backed men ; they were his kindred in moral 
and spiritual qualities. " I wish you would say to Mr. 
Stevens for me," said Chief Justice Chase to a visitor 
who was starting to see Stevens, not long before his 



CHARACTERISTICS 593 

death, " that when he goes out of the House lie will 
take with him more backbone than he will leave." 1 
He was not always scrupulous as to the methods of 
accomplishing his ends. He often supported meas- 
ures to which he could not give his unqualified assent, 
recognizing, as he said on one occasion that " Con- 
gress is composed of men, not of angels." He sought 
the best attainable, and he believed that the game of 
" practical politics " demanded the use of means which 
in themselves he could not defend. In this he was 
guilty of the common error and folly of the so-called 
" practical men " of his time. He was far from be- 
ing the strict moralist or purist who would stand for 
the absolute good regardless of the circumstances and 
opposition confronting him. Mr. Samuel S. Cox, of 
Ohio, was a party to an affair which illustrates this 
disposition of Stevens. 

Soon after the war Mr. Stevens introduced a bill 
to appropriate $800,000 to reimburse the state of 
Pennsylvania for expenses incurred in repelling in- 
vasions and suppressing insurrections. The bill was 
referred to the Committee on Appropriation, of which 
Stevens was chairman. Without delay he reported 
the bill. During the Antietam and Gettysburg cam- 
paigns bodies of troops had been organized for de- 
fense, and expense had been incurred by towns and 
counties, but no actual service had been performed. 
The appropriation was intended to provide for the 
payment of these expenses. There was opposition led 
by Dawes, of Massachusetts; Boutwell, of Massachu- 
setts, prepared a brief for Dawes' use. When it be- 
1 Letter of Jonathan Blanchard. 



'594 THE LIFE OF THADDEUS STEVENS 

came apparent that the bill would be lost, Cox, of Ohio, 
arose and moved to insert after the word Pennsylvania 
the words Maryland, West Virginia, Ohio, Indiana, 
Kentucky, Illinois, Missouri, Kansas and the Territory 
of New Mexico. Also to strike out $800,000 and in- 
sert $10,000,000. This brought to the support of the 
measure the members from all those states and the bill 
was passed. The Senate never acted on the bill. 
Bout well was indignant at the action of the House and 
exclaimed to Stevens, whose seat was near to Bout- 
well's, " This is the most outrageous thing that I have 
seen on the floor of the House." Stevens doubled his 
fist, but not in anger, shook it in my face and said : 
" You rascal, if you had allowed me to have my rights 
I should not have been compelled to make a corrupt 
bargain in order to get them." " Thus," says Bout- 
well, " he admitted his arrangement with Cox and the 
character of it and laid the responsibility on me." 1 

It was not parliamentary to call a man a liar in the 
House, but when Stevens wished to convey an im- 
pression to that effect concerning Brooks, of New York, 
the Democratic leader, he maintained his contention by 
saying that " there is nothing to the contrary but the 
remark of the gentleman from New York, which, I 
beg leave to say, is not now evidence in a court of jus- 
tice." 

He frequently gave vent to his feelings in profan- 
ity. On one occasion, hearing a crash of some dishes 
in his dining-room and knowing that something was 
broken, he shouted to the colored servant with im- 
patience : " Well, it, what thing have you 

1 George S. Boutwell, Reminiscences, Vol. II, pp. 9 and 10. 



CHARACTERISTICS 595 

broken now?" "I bless de Lawd," said the colored 
woman, " that it am not de third commandment." 
Stevens smiled in good humor and accepted the re- 
proof. 

His two strong stalwart colored servants were 
carrying him up the steps of the Capitol in his chair, 
as their custom was, during the last weeks of his at- 
tendance upon the House. It had been apparent for 
some time to those about him that he had but a short 
time to live. One of the servants thought Stevens 
seemed unusually sad one morning and ventured to 
ask the reason for his depression. " Oh," said Stev- 
ens, " I was thinking of your great kindness and won- 
dering who will carry me up these steps when you two 
men are gone." Mr. Forney says there is nothing 
finer in the annals of humor than this. " Here was 
not only uncommon wit, but a sense of intellectual im- 
mortality." 1 

The common report is that Stevens was an invet- 
erate gambler. He played poker and other games of 
cards for money, as the custom was in his time and 
community. But he was not a professional gambler. 
He played from the love of the game, for the excite- 
ment and sociability of the gaming table, not from 
avarice or love of money, or from a purpose and de- 
sire to reap ill-gotten gains. When his friend Blanch- 
ard who was ever anxious for the welfare of Stevens' 
soul and who from love of Stevens never hesitated to 
rebuke him for his sins and errors, once inquired about 
his gambling Stevens told him a story of a good old 
Lutheran pastor in Lancaster who applied to him once 
1 Anecdotes of Public Men, p. 37. 



596 THE LIFE OF THADDEUS STEVENS 

to prosecute one of his own church officers for slander- 
ing him. Said Stevens, " Why, Father H., what 
does Hans accuse you of?" "Why, gambling." 
" Gambling! What did the fellow make the story out 
of ? " The old gentleman said he was taking a friendly 
game in the back room of a beer saloon owned by an- 
other of his officers, and " Hans, he peeped his nose 
in, and vent and told that ve vas gambling." " Father 
H.," said Stevens, " you are sure there was no 
money on the card table ? " " Vy, shust a leedle on 
one corner to give interest to de game." Stevens ad- 
vised the old pastor not to prosecute. " Thus you 
see," said Stevens to Blanchard, " how an honest 
man can play cards for money and not consider it 
gambling. I condemn the practise. But I live alone 
in my hotel and I play for the amusement and the 
excitement." 

This story and apology may explain his motive in 
the game, but it does not reveal the extent of his sin- 
ning. The gambling spirit was strong in him and 
probably few men were more fond of " fighting the 
tiger." One acquaintance testifies to seeing him lose 
two thousand dollars in one night, but he was at the 
game again the next night. He did not carry this 
mania with him, however, to his later years, for 
Blanchard testifies that Stevens told him but a few 
weeks before his death that he had not touched a card 
at gambling in five years. 

One of the familiar stories suggesting his gambling- 
habit relates to his spontaneous contribution to a 
negro church in Washington. A former Vice-Presi- 
dent, Mr. Adlai Stevenson, gives Mr. James G. Blaine 



CHARACTERISTICS 597 

as authority for the story, that as Mr. Blaine, during 
his first term in Congress was walking clown Penn- 
sylvania Avenue he met Stevens coming down the 
steps of what was then known to be a high-toned 
gambling house. Immediately after his cordial greet- 
ing to Mr. Blaine, Stevens was accosted by a negro 
preacher who earnestly requested a contribution to- 
ward the building of a church for his people. Stev- 
ens was fresh from his earnings and promptly taking 
a roll of money from his vest pocket, he handed the 
negro a fifty dollar bill, and turning to Blaine he 
observed with solemn mien, 

" God moves in a mysterious way 
His wonders to perform." 

He was generous with his winnings as this story il- 
lustrates. He did not look upon the stakes with a 
selfish and grasping love of money. He was gener- 
ally the victim of men who had more skill and less 
honor than himself, but he won at times, and that 
worried him as much as to lose. A good natured 
Irish friend challenged Stevens one night to a game 
of poker. Stevens accepted and before they arose 
from the table he had won the Irishman's five hundred 
dollars, — the whole sum that he had so laboriously 
saved for his wedding that was to come off the follow- 
ing week. Fitz had promised the bride-elect a wedding 
trip. He was now disconsolate, but necessity drove 
him to inform his intended of his losses at gambling 
and that he could not take her upon the extended trip 
which they had been so fondly anticipating. " Well," 
said the girl, " don't be downcast nor discouraged ; 



598 THE LIFE OF! THADDEUS STEVENS 

we'll get married and take the trip anyhow, for I have 
money to pay the bills." On the wedding journey, 
but not till then as she had been enjoined, she told the 
happy bridegroom where she got the money for their 
journey, — that Mr. Stevens had brought it to her the 
day after Fitz had " lost " it and pressed it upon her, 
saying he wished her to join with him in teaching Fitz 
a lesson. One may feel quite sure that Stevens had 
another devoted friend and supporter among his Irish 
constituency. 

It was well known that Stevens did not like the 
Camerons. He was displeased with Simon Cameron's 
presence in Lincoln's Cabinet. Cameron and Stevens 
represented different elements, or factions, in the Re- 
publican politics of Pennsylvania. Cameron was the 
original founder and boss of the modern Republican 
machine in that state which for crooked, dark, sordid, 
and debasing trickery stands unrivaled in the history 
of American politics. Late in Stevens' life, in the 
winter of 1866-7, ne an d Cameron, Governor Curtin, 
and John W. Forney were candidates for the United 
States Senate before the Pennsylvania Legislature. 
Curtin had no chance in the scramble. Forney with- 
drew and advocated the claims of Stevens. If the 
election could have been left with the people Stevens 
would have been elected without much concern or at- 
tention upon his part; at least, his friends so claimed. 
But certain members of the legislature were Cam- 
eron's henchmen. The hidden intrigues of the secret 
caucus were resorted to, though there was no possible 
danger of the election of a Democrat in the open leg- 
islature. Money was used and " men were bought as 



CHARACTERISTICS 599 

so many oxen or asses." 1 Stevens, although he had 
not been guiltless of the illegitimate use of money in 
his campaigns for nomination and election to Congress, 
could not compete with Cameron in this respect, nor 
did he wish to. He had never relied upon the party 
machine for his successes. It may have been some- 
thing more than his impending defeat for the Senate 
by a man who could outdo him in the corrupt use of 
money that now brought Stevens to make a plea for 
the purity of elections. It is to be regretted that he 
was so much of a misanthrope in his politics. He was 
inclined to believe that all men, or at least the great 
majority of men, would in the last resort always be 
governed by their material interests and the baser in- 
fluences, that sordid selfishness and not the public in- 
terest would control men. It is hard to believe that 
this was at heart his real philosophy. His own life 
belied it, and he had known and appreciated zealous 
and noble evangels like his friend Blanchard, whose 
life of loyalty to ideals and sacrifices for a cause would 
serve to burn out such a belief from any man's mind. 
At any rate, Stevens in his later years had come to a 
keener appreciation of the woful results to free insti- 
tutions of the control of elections by the corrupt use 
of money, and he desired that his candidacy for the 
Senate should be conducted in the open where the 

^Letter of Samuel Kaufman to Stevens, January 4, 1867. 
This letter was written, as several others from Kaufman, to 
urge Stevens to throw himself personally into the senatorial 
fight. This friend urged Stevens to investigate and expose 
Cameron. "Give up a little of your niggerism and try to ferret 
out dishonest government officials, no matter whom it may hit. 
Whig, Republican, Democrat, Rebel, Union man, Odd Fellow, or 
Free Mason." 



600 THE LIFE OF THADDEUS STEVENS 

public could see and scrutinize his action and that of 
his friends. But Cameron managed to have the secret 
caucus nominate, and there he could " buy the mem- 
bers with his ill-gotten treasure." 1 

Kaufman reminded Stevens that as a member of 
Congress he ought to have known " that Cameron 
while Secretary of War was defrauding the govern- 
ment out of millions by awarding contracts at large 
figures and dividing the spoil, — given at times to Cop- 
perhead gamblers; James Duffer, of Marietta, a notori- 
ous gambler, received a large share ! " Stevens shared 
Kaufman's opinion that Cameron was " the most con- 
summate scoundrel in Pennsylvania." One of the 
Stevens stories is to the effect that Lincoln once, in an- 
swer to Stevens' protest against an appointment for 
Cameron, asked Stevens if he intended to say that 
Cameron would steal. " Well," said Stevens, " I do 
not think he would steal a red hot stove." Lincoln 
thought this too good to keep and he told it to Cam- 
eron who demanded a retraction from Stevens. The 
latter, always ready to make amends, went to Lincoln 
and said : " Mr. Lincoln, why did you tell Mr. Cam- 
eron what I said ? He is very mad and made me prom- 
ise to retract. I will now do so. I believe I told you 
that I didn't think he would steal a red hot stove. I 
now take that back." 

Many stories of another kind were told of Stevens 
in derogation of his moral life, — the kind that many 
men like to roll as sweet morsels under their tongue. 
His personal and political enemies charged him with 
all kinds of misdemeanors with the other sex. Ac- 

1 Letter of Kaufman, January 4, 1867. 



CHARACTERISTICS 601 

cording to these his colored housekeeper was his mis- 
tress; he was the father of mulattoes; and to his latest 
years he was nothing short of " a hoary, habitual, and 
beastly debauchee." 

In this respect Stevens has but suffered the fate of 
many another honored public man. It will not be 
claimed that his life was above reproach, but impartial 
witnesses who knew him best would not hesitate to 
brand such stories, in their main content, as false and 
malicious slanders. So far as can be learned, but twice 
in his life did Stevens consent even to notice these 
charges. He was a man of truth. His worst enemy 
never charged him with lying and hypocrisy. His 
friends and neighbors who knew his life will generally 
assert that he would rest under the charges and carry 
them to his grave rather than to deny them falsely. 
But late in his life, while Stevens was at the height of 
his power and fame, his old friend, Jonathan Blanch- 
ard, who honored and applauded Stevens in his heated 
political struggles of more than thirty years before, 
came to him with the reports that were circulating 
concerning his way of living. Blanchard was like a 
veritable prophet in Israel who would have said with- 
out fear or favor, to courtier or king, " Now hear the 
word of the Lord!" He seemed determined that 
Stevens should hear the word of rebuke and warning 
for the reputed sins of his life, — licentiousness and 
gambling. Before the interview which he sought 
Blanchard wrote Stevens a letter. 

" At present," he wrote, " in every part of the United 
States people believe that your personal life has been one 



602 THE LIFE OF THADDEUS STEVENS 

prolonged sin; that your lips have been defiled with 
blasphemy; your hands with gambling; and your body with 
women ! A man in Newburyport, Massachusetts, now a 
Christian but then a card-playing lawyer, told me three 
weeks since that he had, at the card-table, heard from your 
mouth language fit only for an ordinary brothel, and such is 
the general belief. Now you owe it to yourself and to your 
mother's God, to leave some means of correcting this belief, 
if false, or to show that you have always condemned and 
despised yourself on account of these besetting sins ! 

" I have a strange hope that you are not to be lost. 
Though I will not Insult your intelligence by arguing that 
' whore-mongers and adulterers ' are necessarily left outside 
">f heaven with dogs, sorcerers and murderers, or that if you 
c. : in these sins, where Christ is, you can not come. 

" But as I have studied you the last quarter of a cen- 
tury, you seem to me to have been at times able to say, 
' With the mind I myself serve the law of God, but with the 
flesh the law of sin ' ; that, as I do, you really loathe and 
despise yourself on account of sins. The good you have 
done the country (and none have done more, if so much) 
is no offset for vices such as I have named above. ' God 
will not hold one guiltless for such violations of His law, 
nor ought He/ Besides, what makes bad government is bad 
and sinful men. If there were no vile men there would be 
no bad government. 

" But if you will say now, at the eleventh hour of life, 
and just ready to strike twelve; — if, even now, you will go 
to Christ, He has all the power in Heaven and earth and can 
make your scarlet sins white ! I have loved and followed 
you with a strange fascination. I have prayed and do still 
pray for you with a terrible earnestness, and now I bid you 
farewell." 

This letter was written by Blanchard from Wash- 
ington, February 15, 1865. The brave and faithful 
preacher of righteousness wrote thus to Stevens after 



CHARACTERISTICS 603 

visiting him for the purpose of soliciting funds for a 
college ! * He had made it clear to Stevens that he 
would not waive his religion to secure Stevens' friend- 
ship, and while disclaiming any knowledge of the truth 
or falsehood of the charges to which he referred, he 
sought Stevens' help, as he told him in fullest candor, 
as " that of a wicked man of influence in behalf of a 
good cause which it was for his interest to serve." 

Blanchard afterward learned and acknowledged the 
injustice of much that was implied in this private let- 
ter, and he reports the following words in Stevens' re- 
ply. 

" This is the first line or word I have ever penned in 
explanation of my conduct as assailed by my enemies. 
Probably as between us and our Creator, all of us are 
somewhat deficient. I know I am deplorably so. But 
as to my fellow men, I hope so to live that no one 
shall ever be wronged, or §uffer on my account." 

" I believe," added Blanchard, " that his confession 
was as sincere as his purpose was magnanimous." 
When he wrote his remarkable letter Blanchard did 
not know how Stevens, very early in his political 
career, had prosecuted and closed up a Democratic 
newspaper for charging him with licentiousness and 
indecent blasphemy. He had been charged among 
other coarse and indecent things with " administering 
the sacrament to a dog." " I have allowed slander- 
ers," continued Stevens in his reply, " to say what they 
pleased. I made up my mind not to answer anything 
till I saw this charge. That was a little too much. I 
knew if my mother saw that and had any idea that it 

1 Wheaton College, in Illinois. 



604 THE LIFE OF THADDEUS STEVENS 

was true it would break her heart. I pursued and 
brought the slanderers to the door of the prison and 
then the Governor pardoned them out." 

Again two years later, September 14, 1867, being 
earnestly urged for public reasons, he wrote to a con- 
fidential friend, 

" Perhaps no man in the state has received more slanders 
or been charged with more vices or malignant crimes than 
I have. It has been my misfortune for forty years to be a 
bitter object of attack by violent politicians. I have seldom 
noticed them, — never to contradict them unless they 
affected my moral character aside from politics or unless a 
contradiction was required by the interest of others. You 
tell me the charge may influence the next election; hence I 
notice it." 

He then made full denial of certain specific charges 
brought against his private life, and continued: 

" This is a larger disclosure than, I believe, I have ever 
made before of my private affairs, and I have done it now 
only out of what you think is required by public affairs. 

" These calumnies, and worse, have been perennially pub- 
lished all around me, by fellows living within sight of my 
door. I know of no one who has believed any of them, or 
scarcely pretended to believe them." 

He was accused of being coarse and contemptuous 
toward all religion and of always " sitting in the seat 
of the scornful." In fact, he had no scorn nor con- 
tempt for true religion. He was not a Christian in the 
churchly or orthodox sense. But for true piety and 
humility, for holy sacrifice and service, for Christian 
living and the ideals of the Christian, he had a deep 
and sincere respect. When Blanchard asked him in 



CHARACTERISTICS 605 

his last interview what he thought of Christ, he said, 
" Why, to know Him and not to love Him a man must 
be a brute indeed, but whether I do or not God is my 
judge." 

He was accused of drunkenness. Instead, he was 
a man of sobriety. In his early life he had been a 
drinker. But one night, after a carousal with some 
companions, he made up his mind to drink no more, 
and by his own testimony, for the last thirty years of 
his life not a drop of intoxicating liquors passed his 
lips except by the prescription of a physician, and then, 
he said, he took " the stuff " with distaste and re- 
luctance. 

He was, indeed, a man of serious shortcomings and 
imperfections. His life was in the limelight and in 
public strife with men. He could not, therefore, 
escape reproaches that his fellow-sinners escaped. As 
he was great in his virtues his vices may have appeared 
correspondingly great, but that he was especially darker 
in his moral life than the men of his place and time 
is not believed by those who lived by him through a 
long period of years. 1 It is sufficient, after noticing 
the tales of slander about his life, to let his denial and 
the respect of his neighbors and friends stand against 
hateful and irresponsible accusation. " It should be 
remembered that the life of public men is a life of 
calumny and misery. When therefore they have re- 
tired let their good deeds be inscribed on tables of 
brass and over their errors be thrown the mantle of 
oblivion." In these words of Stevens himself, uttered 
early in his career while pleading in the Pennsylvania 

1 Conversations with citizens of Lancaster. 



606 THE LIFE OF THADDEUS STEVENS 

Legislature for a School of Liberal Arts for his 
adopted commonwealth, one finds expressed a fair 
criterion for dealing with the character of public men. 

The chief theme of the biographer is the public life 
of his subject, what he contributed through public 
speech, influence, and policy to the welfare and to the 
history of his country, and what factors in his char- 
acter prompted him so to do. Like most great leaders 
who guide the destinies of contending parties in a 
crisis of revolutionary strife, Stevens' character has 
been the subject of most divergent views. To his ad- 
mirers he was brave and lion-hearted, ready, without 
thought of self, to sacrifice life and fortune and the 
favor of his fellow men for the sake of noble purposes 
and high ideals. To his detractors he was but little 
short of a monster, who, reckless of his country's wel- 
fare, deformed in body and misanthropic in spirit, 
found a keen and malicious pleasure in inflicting injury 
upon those whom he hated. 

It is obvious that neither of these extreme views of 
the man is worthy of acceptance. It is undoubtedly 
the verdict of history that Stevens indulged too long 
and too intensely the heat and wrath and hate en- 
gendered by a bloody civil war. This aspect of his 
public life, during a divided and distressing period of 
his country's history, has made him appear as alto- 
gether implacable and unforgiving. But his hatreds 
were not personal, and the enemies whom he faced in 
heat and passion were, as he thought, not his own 
enemies, but the enemies of his country, the enemies 
of a righteous and noble cause. It was for this sake 
and not for his own that he used the language of de- 



CHARACTERISTICS 607 

nunciation. He must be judged not by the feeling and 
disposition of these later and happier times of peace, 
reconciliation, and good will between the sections, but 
by the times of strife and passion in which he lived. 

There was, no doubt, nobility and greatness in Ste- 
vens' character. He brought to his country's service 
learning and eloquence, firmness of will, directness and 
tenacity of purpose, the noblest courage, and a fine and 
consuming scorn and contempt for evasion and hypoc- 
risy and the low arts of political tricksters. He was 
an unrelenting foe to every form of tyranny over the 
minds of men. He was a man of great mind and 
clear vision, to a degree quite rare among men, and, 
what is rarer still, he had the courage to assert his mind 
and to follow his vision. The time-server and the 
trimmer stepped aside to let him pass. Amid the great- 
est changes that ever occurred in any decade of our 
national life, facing the detraction of enemies, the ti- 
midity of friends, the corruption and tyranny of power, 
and the cowardice of party, he stood with Puritan and 
Spartan firmness for a definite end, the goal of equity 
and justice that had been fixed for him by his unwaver- 
ing democratic faith. Indifferent to praise or blame 
where his cause was at stake; unmoved by considera- 
tions of rank, title, wealth, or position, selfish motives 
did not animate his public conduct. The selfishness 
that was in him, as it is in all men, was not of the mean 
and miserly kind. While seeking his own interest and 
his own end in private life he would not defraud and 
oppress his neighbor. His selfishness in public life 
also was of the nobler kind. While he frequently 
sought place and power, not in honor preferring oth- 



608 THE LIFE OF THADDEUS STEVENS 

ers, but crushing them or pushing them aside, some- 
times with seeming meanness sacrificing his friends; 
and while, in natural vanity, he was possessed of a 
strong love of prominence and public praise, yet he 
pursued his ends and sought place and power not chiefly 
for his own glory, but that he might elevate his country 
and lift up the mass of downtrodden humanity which 
he saw around him. 

He was not a saint by any means; but like Crom- 
well, who was in many ways his prototype, he was 
ready to be painted as he was. " I am just what I 
am whether you like me or not," he said. In spite 
of the defects of his character — and they were many 
— it seems clear to those who study his life that the 
motives and aims that impelled him to speak and fight 
and labor and spend himself for his cause were not 
mean nor selfish. His detractors were generally little 
men of conventional opinion, without vision or the 
spirit that would lead them to do battle and sacrifice 
for a cause. Stevens, on the other hand, was a man 
of large mold and of great purposes, who was striving 
with his whole soul, to carve other and better channels 
for the life of society, pursuing steadily, without vari- 
ation or shadow of turning, the two great purposes of 
his public life, the unity of the nation and the freedom 
of the slave. 

" He was undoubtedly, all things considered," says 
Mr. Forney, " the ablest parliamentary leader of his 
time. Tall in stature, 1 deliberate in utterance and in 

1 Stevens was five feet eleven inches tall, clear, ruddy, smooth 
of skin, a fine horseman, an excellent swimmer, and fond of the 
chase. A. H. Hood, History of Lancaster County. 



CHARACTERISTICS 609 

gesticulation, and with a massive head and features so 
remarkable that no one who saw him once could ever 
forget him, his whole presence conveyed the idea of 
dignity and force. His forehead was uncommonly 
high and broad, his features were bold and striking, his 
brows projecting and his cavernous eyes bright and 
piercing and full of expression. He was simple and 
direct in conversation, and when he listened he looked, 
as it were, into the very soul of the talker, piercing 
through duplicity and laying bare deceit." * 

In the chief cemeteries of Lancaster it was stipulated 
by charter that no person of color should be interred 
therein. Stevens had lots in both cemeteries, but he 
sent back the deeds, preferring to be laid to rest in 
Shreiner's cemetery, a private and humble burying- 
ground not far from the center of Lancaster and near 
one of its public schools. There on a worthy monu- 
ment erected to his memory the visitor may read these 
characteristic words composed for his epitaph by the 
Great Democractic Commoner himself: 

I repose in this quiet and secluded spot, 

Not from any natural preference for solitude, 

But finding other cemeteries limited by charter rules 

as to race, 

I have chosen this that I might illustrate 

in my death 
The principles which I advocated through 
a long life, 
Equality of man before his Creator. 

He died as he lived, the relentless foe of Privilege, 
the uncompromising advocate of Democracy, — of 
1 Philadelphia Press, August 12, 1868. 



610 THE LIFE OF THADDEUS STEVENS 

equal rights for all and special privileges for none be- 
neath the law. " I know not what record of sin 
awaits me in the other world, but this I know, — that 
I have never been guilty of despising a man because he 
was poor, because he was ignorant, or because he was 
black." These words fitly apply to the life and char- 
acter of Thaddeus Stevens. 1 Before all else he stood 
for liberty and the equal rights of men. To this 
faith he bore his consistent testimony from early life 
to the open grave and beyond. No truer democrat, 
no abler advocate of popular rights, ever stood in 
American legislative halls. 

1 Attributed to Governor John A. Andrew, of Massachusetts. 



THE END 



INDEX 



INDEX 613 

Abolitionists, 57 sqq. 

Adams, Charles Francis, 154, 155, 156. 

Adams, J. Q., 69. 

Alaska, purchase of, 585. 

Amnesty, 295. 

Anti-Lecompton Democrats, 130, 142. 

Anti-Masonic party, 13 sqq. 

Archer, Stevenson, 10. 

Arkansas, reconstruction in, 303. 

Ashley, of Ohio, 200. 

Aydelotte, Doctor, 68. 

Banks, General N. P., 298. 

Beecher, Henry Ward, 53, 126. 

Bigelow, John, 500. 

Bingham, John A., 341, 379, 380, 399, 400, 402, 437, 443, 445, 451, 

452, 463, 464, 498, 504, 505. 
Birney, James G., 69. 
Blaine, James G., 336, 337, 386, 387, 433, 463, 468, 479, 482, 498, 

556, 597. 
Blair, Francis P., 226 sqq., 317, 570, 571. 
Blanchard, Jonathan, 8, 57 sqq., 68, 601 sqq. 
Blockade, 213. 
Border states, 169, 187. 
Boutwell, George S., 341, 419, 462, 495, 557. 
Brooks, James, 339, 340. 
Brooks, Phillips, 483, 484. 
Brown, John, 133, 136. 
Brown, William J., 82. 
Brownson, O. A., 354, 355. 
Buchanan, President, 157, 159, 160. 
"Buckshot" war, 27 sqq., 137. 
Bull Run, 171. 

Burgess, Professor J. W., 441. 
Burrowes, 28, 31, 32. 
Butler, Benjamin F., 293, 510, 575. 



614 INDEX 

Calhoun and Southern leaders, 75. 

California, 73, 77, 113. 

Cameron, Simon, 151, 239, 598, 600. 

Chase, Salmon P., 67, 69; policy as Secretary of the Treasury, 

242 sqq. ; 333, 555. 
Chase, Samuel, impeachment of, 493. 
Chase, Solon, 544. 

Cheever, Doctor H. T. approves Stevens, 355. 
Circulating medium in 1865, 547, 548. 
Civil rights bill, 366, 371, 379, 381, 383. 
Civil War, and slavery, 168 sqq. ; and the constitution, 207 sqq. ; 

ways and means in, 239 sqq. 
Clay, Henry, 65, 71, 81, 111, 113, 269. 
Clemens, of Virginia, 147. 
Cobb, Howell, 81, 90. 
Covode's resolution, 498. 
Colfax, Schuyler, 340. 

Confiscation, 173, 210, 215, 217, 350, 521 sqq. 
Congressional campaign committee, 407. 
Conkling, Roscoe, 341, 387, 388. 
Constitution, the, in the war, 207 sqq. 
Contraction, 536 sqq. 
Cooke, Jay, 564, 579. 
Cooper, Peter, 269, 277, 545. 

"Copperheads", 193 sqq., 349, 352, 364, 365, 396, 528. 
Corwin, Thomas, 130, 137, 146. 
Crittenden compromise, 156. 
Crittenden Resolutions, 171, 172, 174. 
Curtis, Benjamin R., 507, 508. 
Curtis, George William, 484, 530. 

Dana, Charles A., 235. 
Davis, Garrett, 367. 
Davis, Henry Winter, 306 sqq. 
Davis, Jefferson, 228, 522. 
Debt, national, 240, 241. 



INDEX 615 

Debt payment, 536 sqq. ; 561 sqq. 
Demand notes, 245. 

Democratic party, policy on reconstruction, 312 sqq.; on John- 
son's reconstruction, 325 sqq. 
Dewey, Professor D. R., quoted, 256. 
District of Columbia, slavery in, 78 sqq. 
Disunion, 152 sqq. 
Doolittle, Senator, 409. 
Douglas, Stephen A., 155. 

Ellmaker, Amos, 25. 

Emancipation, 210. 

Evarts, William M., 507, 585. 

Fessenden, William P., 248, 249, 279, 341, 433. 

Finck, Representative, 466, 467. 

Forney, John W., 50, 560. 

Fourteenth amendment, 384 sqq. ; attitude of the South toward, 

434, 470. 
Free schools, Stevens' fight for, 41 sqq. 
Free soil, struggle for, 55 sqq. 
Free-soil party, 155. 

Freedmen's Bureau bill, 355, 358, 369 sqq. 
Fremont, John C, 128, 183, 210. 
Fugitive slave law, 79 sqq., 110, 122 sqq., 165. 
Funding the war debt, 536 sqq. 

Gallatin, James, 246, 261. 

Garfield, James A., 437, 565, 566, 567. 

Gibson, John B., 125. 

Giddings, Joshua R., 70, 83, 90, 114, 126. 

Gilmer, of North Carolina, 131, 132, 133, 137, 138. 

"Gold gamblers", 555, 574, 575. 

Gold standard and greenbacks, 269 sqq., 287 sqq. 

Gorsuch case, 122 sqq. 

Granger, Francis, 65. 



6i6 



INDEX 



Grant, General U. S., 458, 495, 513. 

Greeley, Horace, 155, 515, 564. 

Greenbacks, 239 sqq. ; amount of, 280 ; and cost of the war, 287 

sqq., 541 sqq., 565. 
Greenback party, 277, 290, 291, 537 sqq., 561 sqq. 
Gyger, John, 573. 

Hahn, Michael, 294, 298, 318. 
Hanway, Castner, 122 sqq. 
Harrison, William Henry, 25, 26. 
Helper, Hinton, 131, 133, 139. 
Howard, General O. O., 370. 
Hunter, General, 183, 184, 185. 

Impeachment of Johnson, 491 sqq. 
"Impending Crisis", 131. 

Johnson, Oliver, 126. 

Johnson, President, and reconstruction. 324 sqq. ; early life of, 
328 sqq.; military governor of Tennessee, 329; character 
of, 330 ; breach with Congress, 339 sqq. ; denounces Stev- 
ens, Sumner and others, 358 ; veto of civil rights bill, 372 
sqq. ; "swinging round the circle", 410 sqq. ; obstacle to re- 
construction, 433; impeachment of, 491 sqq.; defense of, 
507; acquittal of, 516. 

Johnson, Reverdy, 531. 

Julian, George W., 84. 



Kansas-Nebraska act, 127. 
Keitt, of South Carolina, 134, 135. 
Kelly, William D., 462, 534. 
Ketcham, John L., 354. 
Know-Nothings, 130. 

Lamar, L. Q. C, 136. 
Lancaster, 11. 

LeBlond, Representative, 465, 466. 
Legal tender notes, 249 sqq., 282. 



INDEX 617 

Letcher, Governor, 224. 

Liberty party, 67, 70. 

Lincoln, President, 152 sqq., 168, 199, 208; misuse of patronage, 

235 ; plan of reconstruction, 293 sqq. ; veto of Wade-Davis 

bill, 320. 
Loan bill of 1863, 550, 567, 568; of 1865, 556. 
Logan, John A., 498. 

Lord, Eleazar, financial writings, 250, 258, 259, 260, 261, 268, 269, 

545. 
Louisiana, reconstruction in, 293 sqq. 
Lowell, James Russell, 484. 

McCall, Samuel W., 43, 156, 341, 363, 425. 

McClure, A. K., 65. 

McCulloch, Hugh, Secretary of the Treasury, 539 sqq., 550, 561 

sqq. 
McElwee, Thomas B., 37, 38. 
McLean, Justice, 151. 
Mann, Horace, 84, 90, 102, 103, 114. 
Medill, Joseph, 484. 
Merrill, Samuel, 7, 8, 354. 
Mexican cessions, 73. 
Missouri compromise, 127. 
Morrill, Justin S., 250, 252, 341, 568, 590. 
Morrill tariff, 151. 

"National Union" convention, 408. 
Negro suffrage, 486. 
Nevada, admission of, 235. 
New Orleans, capture of, 293. 

Orth, Godlove S., 56. 

Peace democrats, 214, 218, 231. 

Peacham academy, 4. 

Pendleton, George H., 130, 200 sqq., 209, 214, 236, 312-316. 



6i8 INDEX 



i 



Pennsylvania college, 51. 

Penrose, Charles B., 31, 32, 61. 

Phillips, Wendell, 155, 358, 397, 410, 411, 530. 

Pierpont government, 221, 222, 331, 361. 

Randall, Josiah, 66. 

Randall, Samuel J., 435. 

Raymond, Henry J., 427, 434, 435, 467, 468. 

Reagan, John H., 140. 

Reconstruction, Lincoln's plan, 293 sqq. ; Johnson's plan, 324 sqq. ; 
joint committee on, 340 sqq., 357, 397, 398, 416, 417, reap- 
pointed, 442, 445, 458, 498; first congressional plan, 369 
sqq. ; before the people, 406 sqq. ; military process of, 
431 sqq. 

Reconstruction acts of 1867, 458 sqq., 506. 

Reed, W. B., 196. 

Republican party, 127 sqq. ; in reconstruction, 307 sqq. 

Resumption of specie payment, 546. 

Rhodes, James R, on Stevens, 450, 451, 472, 474, 509. 

Ritner, Joseph, 14, 27, 29, 33, 35, 57, 125. 

Root, Joseph M., 84, 87 sqq. 

Saulsbury, Senator, 377. 

Schurz, Carl, 355, 484. 

Scott, Winfield S., 65, 72, 120, 121. 

Secession, 152 sqq. 

Seward, William H., 68, 69, 136, 345, 407. 

Seymour, Horatio, 571. 

Shellabarger, Representative, 462. 

Shepley, George F., 293. 

Sheridan, General, 412, 495. 

Sherman, John, 130, 542, 548, 572. 

Sickles, General, 347. 

Slavery, 168 sqq. 

Smith, Garrit, 69. 

Soldiers and sailors convention, 407. 

South, the, constitutional rights of, in war, 215 sqq. 



INDEX 619 

"South Americans", 131, 142. 

Spaulding, E. G., 251. 

Stanton, Edwin M., 495 sqq., 511, 515. 

Stephens, Alexander H., 86, 336, 337. 

Stevens, Thaddeus, birth and early life, 1 sqq.; student life, 5 
sqq.; admission to the Bar, 9; settles in Gettysburg, 11; 
early anti-Mason, 13 sqq. ; denounces masonry, 15 sq. ; in 
the "Buckshot" war, 28 sqq. ; in the Pennsylvania legisla- 
ture, 34 sqq. ; defender of free schools, 41 sqq. ; early Eree- 
soiler, 55 sqq. ; in Pennsylvania constitutional convention, 
64 sqq. ; opposition to Clay, 65 ; supports Harrison, 65 ; 
removes to Lancaster, 66; in Congress before the war, 73 
sqq.; anti-slavery Philippics, 90 sqq. ; tariff views, 114 sqq.; 
defender of fugitive slaves, 122 s(}q. ; eulogy on Chief Jus- 
tice Gibson, 125, 126; on eve of the war, 125 sqq.; conflict 
with Southern radicals, 141 sqq. ; on Ways and Means Com- 
mittee, 149; denounces Buchanan, 159 sqq.; opposition to 
compromise, 163; estimate of abolitionists, 170; opposes 
Crittenden Resolutions, 171 sqq.; on confiscation, 173, 471, 
521 sqq.; on arming the blacks, 174, 185; radical anti- 
slavery war policy, 175 sqq., 230 ; approved by anti-slavery 
constituents, 181 sqq.; approves military emancipation, 184 
sqq. ; criticizes Lincoln, 186 sqq. ; opposes the "Union as it 
was", 192, 193; approves Lincoln, 199; hatred of slavery, 
204 sqq. ; on the constitution in war, 207 sqq. ; controversy 
with F. P. Blair, 226 sqq.; doctrine of Southern belliger- 
ency, 227 sqq. ; doctrine of the abrogation of the constitu- 
tion, 230 sqq. ; chairman of Ways and Means Committee, 
239 sqq. ; aspirant for Cabinet appointment under Lincoln, 
239 ; policy on legal tender money, 249 sqq. ; opposition to 
the gold standard, 268 sqq. ; as a Greenbackcr, 286 sqq., 536 
sqq. ; on Lincoln's reconstruction, 302 sqq. ;' open struggle 
with Johnson, 340 sqq. ; party motive' in reconstruction, 
352 sqq.; advocacy of equal rights, 353, 429; public ap- 
proval, 354; mock eulogy of Johnson, 362 sqq.; in Con- 
gressional reconstruction, 369 sqq. ; on civil rights bill, 377 
sqq. ; on the fourteenth amendment, 384 sqq., 470 ; in the 
campaign of 1866, 418 sqq. ; on military reconstruction, 
434 sqq., 458 sqq. ; vindictiveness of, 450, 451 ; triumphs 
in reconstruction, 472; criticisms of, 474 sqq.; in impeach- 
ment trial, 491 sqq. ; and Wall Street, 560, 575 ; advocates 
bond payment in greenbacks, 570, 571 ; closing days, 584 
sqq.; will of, 589; anecdotes of, 590 sqq.; character of, 
601 sqq. ; epitaph, 609. 



620 INDEX 

Stevens Institute, 589. 

Stockton, Senator, 375. 

Stuart, Reverend Moses, 112. 

Sumner, Charles, 126, 2,22, 355, 395, 411, 438, 484, 530. 

Sumter, Fort, 166, 170. 

Taft, Alphonso, approves Stevens, 354. 

Talleyrand, Count, 2. 

Tariff, 114. 

Tenure of Office act, 496, 501, 506, 508, 511 sqq. 

Texas, 73 ; reconstruction of, 335. 

Thirteenth amendment, 235. 

Thomas, Lorenzo B., 496 sqq., 513. 

Toombs, Robert, 85, 91, 120. 

Trumbull, Lyman, 322, 374. 

Vallandigham, C. C, 142. 
Van Buren, Martin, 76. 
Virginia, division of, 221 sqq. 

Wade, Benjamin, 307, 320, 376, 377, 484, 500. 

Wade-Davis plan of reconstruction, 307 sqq., 333. 

Walker tariff of 1846, 116. 

Washburn, E. B, 128. 

Wells, David A., 541. 

Welles, Gideon, 500. 

West Virginia, admission of, 221 sqq. 

Wheelock, John and Eleazar, 6. 

Whig party, 25, 66, 118 sqq. 

White, Horace, quoted, 276, 279. 

Wilmot, David, 74, 82. 

Wilmot proviso, 74 sqq., 88, 91, 114. 

Wilson, Henry, 278, 484. 

Winthrop, Robert C, 81, 83. 

Wirt, William, 14. 

Wolf, Governor, 22, 23, 47, 50. 



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